Recognizing that there are a few problems areas within its social network, VP of product for Google Plus, Bradley Horowitz said, “We need to improve.” He was speaking to Tim O’Reilly during an hour-long webcast conversation that served as a preview to the upcoming Strata Summit.
The conversation was about Google+, some of its early roadblocks, successes and future. Horowitz addressed a number of issues including:
Identity and Real Names:
On Google’s policy that Google+ users have real names, Horowitz admitted that he and Google VP Vic Gundotra have faced a lot of flak and and that the policy had impacted several group of users. He acknowledged that Google had been wrong in a few specific cases involving users that appeared to have non-real, generic names. Apart from saying that the process needs to be improved, he said that the search engine giant was working on a way to allow anonymity inside Google+. “There is no moral opposition to that happening. We want to let them in a way that’s great for the whole community. It’s a high priority,” he said.
Brand and Enterprise Users:
On Google’s policy that currently bans brands and companies from Google+, Horowitz said that they would love to have brands and companies within the social network but that they wanted to assure that the experience is going to be good for the brands and the people that will follow them and the people that will not, implying that they were working on the issue and would likely take some time.
Horowitz also accepted that Google had frustrated millions of its customers who use Google Apps. Expressing regret, Horowitz said that the company was working towards solving the problems, “The reason is that we have covenants and expectations with the administrators about how the data is stored, whether it will be public or private – we want to get those right, so the product is consistent with the promises we have made,” he said.
Interspersed with the conversations, there were hints that Google+ was looking to add new features and services in the future. A few things which he let out were as follows:
To enable Google+ to become a platform akin to Facebook, Horowitz said that Google intended to open up more APIs. “We will do it in stages and release read APIs before write APIs. This will allow users to manage their Google+ stream via third party clients in the same way that many do with Twitter and Facebook,” he said.
He also said that Google+ was open to the idea of a Twitter integration. “Users should own their data and If I want my data to land in another service, conceptually that should be possible. We will get there,” he said.
Google is also looking to extend the current 10-person limit for Google+ Hangouts. Horowitz spoke of a user-generated idea for debate-style hangouts, in which individuals have timed speaking slots.
Concluding the conversation, Horowitz said that they had planned new and unexpected features for Google+, that is likely to change the center of gravity of the product and that there would be a shift in the way in which users think of the service entirely.
However, Horowitz did not share details or a time frame for any of the new features.
Interestingly, Horowitz’s comments came a couple of hours after social media giant Facebook announced a series of new privacy controls that many, instantly opined, are similar to Google+. Horowitz too agreed saying, “I think it’s good for users, which is exciting for us. What they did was familiar and good for users.”