Comments on: Still a Ways to Go: the Suggested Users List (part 7 of Diversity and Google+)

By: jon

jon — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:53:15 +0000

Six months later, it's still all guys in the Politics section of the Suggested Users List. But at least Barack Obama is there, so it's not all-white! The "picks" category has 23 guys (including Robert Scoble!) and eight women: Britney, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, Jeri Ryan, Ashley Tisdale, Felicia Day, Maria Bartiromo. Several recent posts have looked at the SUL. Billy Wilson reports

To illustrate just how vast the discrepancy is between those on the SUL and those who aren't I did some math based on information I found on Social Statistics: http://goo.gl/TMdSa. For the average interactive user with a follower count between 30,000-100,000 who's not on the SUL they go up on average by 201.4 followers a day and at this rate it would take 7.18 years to hit what is currently the 200th most followed position of 550,441 followers, 10.7 years to hit the 100th position with 795,008, and 29.0 years to hit the top position of +Britney Spears with 2,076,254 followers. The average account that has been on the G+ Suggested User List constantly for the past 31 days goes up by 8,739.6 followers a day, that's 44.4 times as many per day on average than those not on the list. So there obviously appears to be a large discrepancy in the number of followers one is able to obtain between being on the SUL or not.

Milos Janata has a nice visualization. Peter G McDermott observes

As an independent content creator trying to find my place in this space and trying to make a living from it, I am at a critical disadvantage from the people that Google has chosen. I have had in-depth conversations with +Eric Rice, +Chris Pirillo, +Robert Anderson, +Hermine Ngnomire, +matthew rappaport, +Bruce Garber, +Paul Roustan and countless others surrounding this topic. The general consensus is that Google is taking what should be a fair playing field and picking favorites. I think Google was naive in doing this, because they may have not taken into consideration the amount of impact, influence and--potentially--money that they were throwing in the lap of people that they have chosen to recommend.

So ... still a ways to go.

By: jon

jon — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:37:24 +0000

After Bradley Horowitz made such a big deal about how the users on the list would rotate and so we shouldn’t get upset, I figured I’d go back and check it a few weeks later that they’ve opened things up to everybody …

On the “Picks” list — the one that all the new people signing up see by default — they’ve now got +will.i.am . and +Trey Songz instead of +Chamillionaire The Ceo and +50 Cent. +Tyra Banks has replaced +Taylor Swift And +Guy Kawasaki has replaced +Robert Scoble. No change to the overall pattern: overwhelmingly male, the only blacks are musicians, almost all the women are musicians and actors.

And the “politicians” page is down to four (Newt’s gone) … but they’re still all white guys.

Still a ways to go, indeed.

By: Liminal states :: Booberday: Google+ and Diversity, part 8

Liminal states :: Booberday: Google+ and Diversity, part 8 — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:45:48 +0000

[...] Check out the previous posts in the series: A Work in Progress, Why it matters, #nymwars!, A tale of two searches, The double bind of oppression, Anxious masculinity under threat, and Still a Ways to Go [...]

By: Liminal states :: EARLY DRAFT IN PROGRESS: What Diaspora (and everybody else) can learn from Google+

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 05:46:38 +0000

[...] new user experience is crucial; and setting up a “suggested users list” isn’t likely to work out well. Instead, why not try something more [...]

By: jon

jon — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:11:44 +0000

Of course it's not just Google. Here's Diaspora's Featured users list ... Hey wait a second, I'm sensing a pattern here ...

By: jon

jon — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:18:20 +0000

Aha, that explains it!

By: Liminal states :: Notes from Underground: Intention and Transition

Liminal states :: Notes from Underground: Intention and Transition — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 03:23:56 +0000

[...] and business modeling. Oh and Google+ of course. Anxiously masculinity under threat, structural oppression, and nymwars … no shortage of interesting topics! In a depressing kind of way, that [...]

By: jon

jon — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:27:56 +0000

By: jon

jon — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:26:53 +0000

Rob, if Google is trying to use the suggested users list to try to drive a wedge between people who support pseudonymity, you’re certainly playing into their hands with your attacks on Jillian.

By: Still a Ways to Go: the Suggested Users List (part 7 of Diversity and Google+) | Tea Party Courier

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:58:33 +0000

[...] FROM: http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=3033 [...]

By: Rob Gordon

Rob Gordon — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 03:09:43 +0000

You were way to nice about this whole thing. Google has essentially has gamed its own system – as one commenter put it on a post I made about this “they cheated”. The additions of Violet Blue and Jillian York to the “cool people list” were transparent bribe attempts. Violet seemed to pick up on that, Jillian did not, even though she is the one that should have been trained to recognize such things – and I really lost a great deal of respect for the EFF as a result. This was a really pathetic thing for Google to do. They had already lost a great deal of the trust they have built up over the years when they started killing profiles, and now they are even losing their reputation for fairness.

By: Ryan Schultz

Ryan Schultz — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 20:53:09 +0000

The inconsistency I noted was that +RAM (Rich) is an acceptable name, but Skud, someone whose pseudonym is _much_ better known, isn’t: http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-suspended-from-google-plus/
Somebody explain that to me, please, because it MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

By: jon

jon — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 20:48:24 +0000

Also posted on Google+. Feel free to jump in there or here!