IMO the silently majority is tired of a panopticon of "look it me now" social services who's main use case is massaging users egos.

Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles

Meanwhile if you look at the direction Apple is going, eg new APIs for iCloud eg fingerprint authentication, new APIs for foto management / sharing etc etc. they look about ready to pounce on the whole of social...

A large amount of employees have been moved from Google+ to Hangouts and Android.

I think Hangouts is going to be their new standard, unfortunately the transition will likely be fragmented because it's not forced in Android yet.

I've seen a very positive response to Google Hangouts, if they successfully (seamlessly) integrate it into Android then it could be a wildly successfully product. I'm not crazy about the name ("Connect" would be a good alternative IMO) and there should be some more calling/voicemail integration features.

WhatsApp is awful. Why should I need to give my phone number to anyone I want to chat with? There is people with whom I might want to have a text chat without letting them call me, and vice versa. And why, in 2014, should a social account be tied to a particular device? Why doesn't WhatsApp let me use my tablet or my PC to interact with my friends?

If WhatsApp is an example of something, it's that the network effect can make inferior technologies "stick" and dominate markets over much better competitors.

I'd say iMessage over WhatsApp is the example of how to do it now. If Google copied iMessage feature-wise, syncing it between Chrome, Android and iOS, seamlessly integrating SMS and not, I think they'd have a winner.

WhatsApp is simpler but iMessage brings really useful features, and they strongly match Google's key competencies too.

> Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles

I find this fascinating, as unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're basically suggesting what G+ did to enrage users as described in the article, but seemingly worse:

Almost everyone have multiple "personalities". We don't share the same with our grandmother, our friends, our boss, our old class mates, random strangers and so on. This extends all the way to which names we use, how we dress in different situations, who we give our phone number to etc..

At first Google seemed to "get" this better than Facebook when they released G+. The moment Nymwars erupted it was clear they did not only not get this, but actively refused to learn.

For some this is not about hiding information. For some it is. For some it is a matter of actual survival - whether due to political involvement, or because of threats of revenge or abuse (think people avoiding abusing ex-partners etc.), or because of gender identity etc. (trans people have an incredible high suicide rate due in part to the reactions of wider society; on top of that there's actual violent reactions from people). Breaking compartmentalisation puts peoples lives at risk, not just cause embarrassing moments.

The first lesson one should learn in social, is that if you wish to create a social network that reflects how people interact, then people need to be able to full compartmentalise what different people see, down to and including your name and who else you are interacting with, and you need to make sure data are not easily leaking between those compartments and that needs to be holy.

In that respect, even having a single, unified addressbook / contacts list demonstrates that they don't understand (or has purposefully decided not to care about) real social networks (as opposed to the "panopticon" service you decry): It cuts as deep as not revealing all the information on all devices at all times - devices can be shared, or lent out, or someone might just glance at one at the wrong moment. It increases the risk of breaking compartmentalisation accidentally unless users are very tech savvy: Suddenly your device beeps, drawing attention to its screen, just as it displays a message the person sitting next to the device should not have seen.

If you're lucky / extremely conventional / boring, you laugh it off. If you're unlucky, it can cost you your job, your relationships, contact with your family, or your life.

Social networks is not just some fluffy web-app thing - it's the fabric of society, and they cut deep.

Exactly. If they'd required you use a real name under the hood but allowed you to present different pseudonymous "facades" for each Circle, and then let you just tie things like Youtube to a given facade? That would be wonderful.

It really seemed like that's the direction they had in mind at the start - understanding that you have familial relationships, online relationships, professional relationships, and letting you compartmentalize those.

But that was just an organizational tool. We needed it to be two-way - in that you need to control your identity as it relates to those circles.

Do you have any details of the rewrite, what does it imply?

Backend, frontend, etc?

Even if you can just point me to the source it would be appreciated.