They should have given up trying to be the number one and building a walled garden. Rather, they should have opened up Google+.
* Allow users to post to Facebook and Twitter from their interface *
* Show posts from other services (blogs, facebook, twitter, picasa) in your public-facing stream
* Offer this kind of syndication also with open standards (a la Diaspora)
* Give users a public home page they can customize & filter (a mixture of Myspace and a microblog) where they can cultivate an online identity. I think this would be a killer feature.
* Allow users to have "derived identities". I might log in with my verified personal account, but then I can create a second pseudonymous identity that I can use to interact with certain users.
----
*) That might be tricky, since Facebook & co. would try to stop it legally technically. A company like Google could try to fight for their right to do syndication legally, they could lobby for laws forcing large social networks to syndicate, or they could try to circumvent it technically. (Facebook allows users to post via a web browser. When you post something via Google+ to Facebook, make Chrome very theatrically open a new Window, navigate to Facebook, and post stuff there manually, not via API. If Facebook complains, say they are discriminating against some browsers or something.)
* Allow users to post to Facebook and Twitter from their interface *
* Show posts from other services (blogs, facebook, twitter, picasa) in your public-facing stream
* Offer this kind of syndication also with open standards (a la Diaspora)
* Give users a public home page they can customize & filter (a mixture of Myspace and a microblog) where they can cultivate an online identity. I think this would be a killer feature.
* Allow users to have "derived identities". I might log in with my verified personal account, but then I can create a second pseudonymous identity that I can use to interact with certain users.
----
*) That might be tricky, since Facebook & co. would try to stop it legally technically. A company like Google could try to fight for their right to do syndication legally, they could lobby for laws forcing large social networks to syndicate, or they could try to circumvent it technically. (Facebook allows users to post via a web browser. When you post something via Google+ to Facebook, make Chrome very theatrically open a new Window, navigate to Facebook, and post stuff there manually, not via API. If Facebook complains, say they are discriminating against some browsers or something.)