I'm putting this update at the top of this post as well as at the bottom, so nobody misses it:
Updated: It appears that Google engineers are actively working on a way to fix this thing, and that it may not have been intentional. I sincerely hope that that's the case, and will just point out that, if Google didn't have a pattern of social network behaviour to the contrary, I'd be way more willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt.
And it isn't lost on me that my G+ experience is likely quite different from most people's, I get that. If my opinion on this is somehow distressing to you because your experience is different, and you feel a need to be really shitty to me about it, I suggest you save us both the headache and keep it to yourself. Nobody is forcing you to listen to me.
Earlier today, I took a break from work to look at my G+ timeline, and saw that it was absolutely flooded with Event invites.
I thought maybe it was just me, so I asked on my G+ thing:
Did G+ roll out some new "invite everyone you follow to an event" thing? My feed is completely overwhelmed with "everyone's invited to XXXXX event" notices, and I'm having a hard time actually seeing posts from people I'm following.
Oh, and the spammer scumbags have figured out that they can make an invite to an event that's nothing but spam.
Is there a way to opt-out of event invites from people I don't follow or have circled? Is this yet another thing Google rolled out without thinking it through clearly?
After a little bit of research and a lot of comments from a lot of people, it's fairly clear that this is yet another thing Google rolled out without thinking it through clearly... or, worse, this is exactly the way the company intended to do it. I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it's like Google has learned nothing from Buzz, nothing from this, and is actually doing this sort of thing on purpose.
Here's my follow up post on G+:
Google's Event thing is something the company has worked very hard on, and has a lot of big plans for.
It's too bad that I'll never use it, because Google has, yet again, made a product that may be useful and cool, but forced it upon users without giving users any control over how invasive it is.
I don't know how it is for anyone else, but here's what has happened to me today: my timeline, which I look at at least once an hour on a regular day, is nothing but invites to events from people I don't know, or -- worse -- invites to an "event" that is really a spammy advertisement like "You're invited to buy [something] at [dodgy website].
As a result, G+ is useless to me today, and for as long as it takes the company to actually fix this, assuming they ever do. Yeah, it's a first world problem for me, but it's also a problem for Google, because even if 1% of G+ users feel the same way I do, that's a lot of people Google has unnecessarily pissed of and possibly alienated.
Am I supposed to believe that in the development of this event thing not asingle person said, "Hey, maybe we should limit this event invitation thing to people a user has already circled."? Really? After the Buzz fiasco, not a single person in the company spoke up and pointed out that forcing something on users that they don't want and may not need without asking them first or giving them an option at rollout to disable it was a good idea?
Instead of talking about how cool this thing is, and how excited we are to use it, a significant number of G+ users -- and people like Linus Torvalds, who are way more influential than I am are among them -- are talking about how annoyed they are and how much they hate it.
Is that the rollout that Google was hoping for? Has Google learned nothing from doing things like this in the past? I'm starting to believe that this isn't an accident or poor planning, but by design; I just can't figure out why. Why does Google want to annoy its users?
Google isn't stupid, and the Google engineers who work on this stuff are very talented, but someone at the top of Google's Social Networking unit just keeps doing it wrong. If any company wants people to adopt their services, they need to earn it by being awesome, not by clumsy and invasive product or service rollouts that inconvenience or annoy people who would probably like those things otherwise.
Google is going to want a lot of people to buy their Nexus Q and their Augmented Reality Glasses, and I bet those products will be pretty cool... but I'm not going anywhere near them, and I'm not going to encourage anyone else to go anywhere near them, until Google indicates that they have some concern for the end user experience, and seriously thinks through the consequences of forcing things onto their users that they may not want, or need.
Please pay attention, People-Who-Sit-In-Boardrooms, to someone who is actually using your products and isn't surrounded by corporate lackeys telling you how to "leverage" the "intersection" of "unique assets" and "corporatespeak that means nothing but sounds impressive to you": You get people to enthusiastically use services by making them compelling and awesome and easy to use. You don't get people to enthusiastically use your services by forcing them to. In fact, that's probably a great way to ensure that a huge number of people who may have been interested in trying out your service never even look at it.
And if I'm not someone you listen to, People-Who-Sit-In-Boardrooms, maybe you'll listen to Neil Gaiman:
I wish Google would leave the Social Network thing to others. When Google does what it does, and does it well, it changes the world. When it rides bandwagons, it’s irritating.
Come on, Google. I really want to like you, but you're making it really difficult. Honestly, how hard is it to give users a heads up? Doesn't it make more sense to get us excited about something in advance, so we're looking forward to it?
Updated: It appears that Google engineers are actively working on a way to fix this thing, and that it may not have been intentional. I sincerely hope that that's the case, and will just point out that, if Google didn't have a pattern of social network behaviour to the contrary, I'd be way more willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt.
And it isn't lost on me that my G+ experience is likely quite different from most people's, I get that. If my opinion on this is somehow distressing to you because your experience is different, and you feel a need to be really shitty to me about it, I suggest you save us both the headache and keep it to yourself. Nobody is forcing you to listen to me.
