INTERVIEW: Alex Good, Director, Seesr

Over the next few weeks I hope to talk to some interesting people about how they use social networks, in particular Google Plus, and what they think about it. 


My first interview is with Alex Good, male age 24 developer and director of a tech start up. 


Circles

D: How do you use circles? 

A: I follow the hacker news circles so all the people on hacker news are in a google plus circle, you can add yourself to it, and then add everyone in that circle to your circles, and that means that I see all the content that they’re posting, but then I dont have to see it if I don’t want to; so half the time I’ll restrict it to friends, so theres a few people sharing on google plus and I occasionally share on there

Social Search 

A:Its also good because where it integrates with the social search functionality on google, if I search something- say I’m searching for something technical then I can use the social search menue  and because most of the people who are in my circles are from the hacker news circle; which in technical terms they’re reliably and I trust their opinions on technical matters then my search results will be kind of linked to what they think about various articles there 

So I’ll end up with a search result for whatever technical term I’m interested in which has been curated by a bunch of people who I trust the opinion of which is really really useful.
It definitely improves my search results, and its not like the main google search results are effected- its only when I choose social search


Pictures 

D: How do you share pictures? 

A: I share pictures a lot but with individual people- really really specific, because I’m quite paranoid about photos anyway so sharing pictures with a few specific people works quite nicely for me 

D: What do you mean your paranoid? 

A: I dont like the idea that its available for everyone to see, on Facebook photos are available for any of your friends to see; its quite difficult to restrict, whereas Google plus makes it really explicit whose going to see your particular photo, and even warns people when they're re-sharing it so you have to think about how you’r re-sharing. It still bothers me that its an un-centralised service but in the absence of any other solution it works

D: So they’re trying to make it easier to choose the privacy you want?

A: Yeah, Facebook have privacy controls that are equivalent to Googles; you can achieve exactly the same thing on both platforms but Facebook doesn’t make it that easy to do and feels like theres some inertia set forcing you not to- thats what I find anyway

D: I was thinking that with photos google plus reflects what you want to do in real life a bit more because people want to brag occasionally about something, but really you just want to share photos with one or two people, so google improves the quality of what you see, you don’t end up seeing a load of crap

A: Yeah generally speaking I’m not interested in seeing stuff people are bragging about. Have you heard of Path? Its a photo sharing social network where you can have a maximum of 50 friends so it restricts it to small groups of people you actually know. The whole point of it is to try to have meaningful online relationship rather than Facebooks' ‘I’ve got more followers than you’ type thing. Path is focused on real relationships

D: Yeah, If my parents come over, they are really interested in seeing my photos, but if I see one of my Uni friends they're not like ‘oh what have you been up to lets have a look at your phone photos.'

A: Yeah I like google plus for that

D: Do you think other people feel less inclined to post less relevant stuff on Google Plus? 

A: I don’t know, no one seems to post anything on there any more its a ghost town so its hard to tell. Loads of people in the tech world post on there but none of my friends who aren't in the tech community post on there

D: Do you think its got anything to do with it being more like following on twitter? People are more inclined to post something that will make people want to follow them? 

A: I guess when people are posting publicly, I’m not sure how much people realize theres a difference between public and non public posting, its in the same place so it may feel like the same thing- I think they could probably do better with that actually, if public posting was in a separate part or something


The way it looks

D: What do you think of the way it looks? 

A: I don’t think much of the new Google theme in general, lots of grey and red, but then Facebook doesn’t look that great either 

D: I like that it feels more spacious and it feels more gentle- like its a background for the content

A: Yes thats true but I think when you look at it  Facebook actual mangages that better, because its blue, its neutral but red has massive effects on your ability to think

Chat and Hangout

D: Have you used chat and hangout features? 

A: I have used the hangouts once I think to hang out with two other people

A: I google talk with pretty much all my friends, coz they all have android phones, and Gmail and ichat, so I usually use it instead of a text message

D: So you use it differently to instant messaging?

A: I do use it on my laptop as well, but then I can get in touch with someone when I’m on the run without having to send a text on my phone, its really easy. 
If I’m talking to someone on Google chat is usually because I want to talk to them about something, and its the best way to get in touch with them. If I’m at work or something I can send them a message on my laptop but it will be equivalent to a text but its still a-synchronous so its good


Competitors 

D: Who are the competitors for you? 

A: For me definitely Facebook- if I could use Google plus instead of Facebook I definitely would, if all of my friends were to move to Google plus then I would use Google Plus, I only use Facebook because everyone else is on it and I hate it. 
But having said that, if I could use something open source and distributed like Diaspora; if everyone was to move to that, then I would move to that. Google plus is only marginally better than Facebook, and I’m not even sure why I think its better because they are both equally annoying large companies, its not like one’s better than the other in any material way

D: You don’t think the functionality of Google plus is superior to Facebook? 

A: Its a little bit superior but it wouldn’t be that hard for Facebook to implement. You could achieve a lot of stuff that you can do on Google Plus, on Facebook; you can get the same kind of groups of friends. The implementation on google plus is nicer, but I don’t use Facebook enough to care about the interface that much- I go on once or twice a day- on a heavy day

D: How often do you go on Google Plus? 

A: Once a day I guess, but I go on twitter four or five times a day, because its more interesting, because I follow people who are more interesting stories- I get more out of twitter than I get out of Facebook or Google plus 

D: But you could follow people on Google plus that you follow on  Twitter?

A:  A lot of them don’t post on Google plus and also I’ve got Twitter set up already the way I want it, so I tend to just go with it. 
And the twitter app on my phone is a lot easier to use than the Google plus app beucase the google plus app is enormous


De-centralising

A: But again if there was a distributed version of twitter I’d use that instead; the whole point of the web is that its decentralised, and we seem to be centralising everything, and that bothers me.

Theres no reason that you need a central server to follow people; you could have a whole bunch of distributed servers that communicate with each other in the same way that the domain name server does

D: How would that be better? 

A: Because no single company server would control all of the information, which is a problem because if someone wants to shut down twitter for example, its quite easy to do. You have to just tell them to stop running their servers and they shut down, so no twitter. But if you've got something decentralised then they can’t shut down, which is a good thing for everybody I think. It just makes it more robust. If twitter goes down right now, then everyones fucked. But if one node in a distributed network goes down then they're buggered but everyone else in the world is fine

D: If something was decentralised would you feel more inclined to use it? 

A: Yeah definitely I’d trust it a lot more; you’r putting a lot of information online, you need to trust that its going to be available, that your going to be able to use that service. And to an extent, its not so much of a problem with twitter because its pubic information  but with Facebook and Google plus you need to be able to trust that they’re not at the whim or mercies of some foreign government, or even your own government.

If your on Facebook or Google Plus and your friends with people, even if you never post anything, you've never shared any of the information; just the people you’re friends with tells Google, Facebook or whatever an enormous amount about you and what you’r likely to do. -Just because statistically you’r similar to people who have shared that information. 
Your handing over a lot of information to the government. And while the government is someone you should be able to trust; they’re not generally speaking someone you can trust. 

My problem is that the law isn’t a perfect reflection of what is right; all the law does is reflect social norms. Its not OK to murder people so thats illegal. Social norms change quite quickly anyway, and increasingly more quickly than legislation can keep up with. So frequently the right thing is going to be illegal, just because the social norms have changed but the law hasn’t. Copyright and filesharing is an example. 

So you can’t trust the government to be doing the right thing; if only because they can’t necessarily move fast enough for the right thing to be the legal thing. And so giving all that information away, is giving someone who may not have your best interests at heart; lots of power over you, and information is power. So I guess thats why it makes me uneasy.