When Google announced their Google+ service almost 3 years ago I immediately signed up. I used it every day for about 2 years. I put up with frustrating quirks in the web interface thinking that Google would get around to fixing them. Instead these bugs continue to fester with Google being more content to initially changing the interface from single column to 3 column mode, enhancing the photo processing capabilities of the service. The Google+ faithful all the time posting favorable studies on Google+ trying to show that Google+ was gaining on Facebook as THE social network to be on. These people are preaching to the converted.
In the past year I no longer use Google+ every day. Instead I visit via the web interface perhaps once a week if that. None of my friends that are on Google+ post there. I find it extremely frustrating to use Google+ via the web interface.
Google+ web interface frustrations:
- I found that the 3 columnar mode on my wide-screen monitor so tiring on the eyes having your eyes dart around to posts that I reverted to a single column mode.
- I found that inability to stop the endless looping of animated gifs annoying other than muting the posts. Allow the end-user to specify the number of loops before these animations stop.
- The +username link in the Google toolbar does not show you the most up to date display of your main stream. You have to do a manual reload of the page in order to get current version of your main stream.
- If you use Google+ communities I find that when I return to your main stream you have to do a force refresh of the page in order to get current content to show up. Even if you had reached your main stream via the Home link in Google+ web interface.
- The most frustration is coming from the sort algorithm in Google+. The end-user has no control whatsoever regarding the order in which posts appear in your main stream. The Google+ algorithm regularly displays older posts with old comments before posts that are either newer or which have more recent comments, I have seen new posts show up, pages below older posts. I have been told by other Google+ users that one should not read posts using your main stream. Instead one should go to each of your circles and read the posts in each circle. Why have a main stream then? If its sort algorithm is broken fix it! Do not let it languish in a state of limbo.
Some users who take the time and effort to post material to Google+ are probably frustrated wondering why they are not seeing replies to their material. Perhaps this is because some of these posts are being pushed further down main stream well below stale posts in the main stream for other Google+ users. Google allow the end-user the capability, if they desire, to sort their main stream chronologically rather than having some buggy sort algorithm put their posts in some haphazard order.
I have submitted numerous feedback reports on these problems and even submitted them to the Google+ help community and have gotten absolutely no response back to the reports. Updates to the service use to be fairly regular now these days, updates are non existent. It was reported that Google had 1,000 people assigned to Google+. I was astonished to see this number since I have not seen anything on the web version of the service to reflect this rather large number of employees.
I wonder how many users that think Google+ service is the greatest thing since sliced bread actually use the Google+ web interface the majority of the time? From my point of view Google has tailored the service to their end users on mobile devices rather than desktop. For some people the service is an excellent place for them i.e. photographers and appears that Google is aiming the service towards picture storage/processing service. For me it more a source of frustration that I can do without.