thirstythong

“But the most significant derivation from the meaning of as ‘water’ is the concept of people who have gathered near a body of water to grow rice for one another, and founding a stable community, sharing rain and drought, plenty and famine, peace and war: from ‘water,’ its basic meaning, has come to designate ‘the homeland, the country, the nation.’ It is in this ultimate exception that the monosyllable nuoc reverberates throught the deepest and farthest recesses of the Vietnamese collective unconscious and stirs there the most potent feelings. The nation’s fateful course, marked by ups and downs, is figuratively rendered as a ‘tide of water’ (van nuoc) with its ebb and flow. The highest virtue demanded of a Vietnamese is that he or she ‘love the nuoc‘ (yeu nuoc).” –Huynh Sanh Thong (no relation)

Why Google+ Exists

1. Because Google Wave Couldn’t (Exist)

Good design is apparent. There is no need to explain the function of a well-designed product or service.You look at it and you know what to do with it.

Google+ exists because Google Wave couldn’t.

Google Wave couldn’t exist because it was a poorly designed product/service. We know it was poorly designed because it’s Developer’s (preview) introduction video was 1.5 hours long. To put that into perspective, the Mac OSX Lion preview was essentially 1/3 of what was a 2 hour WWDC 2011 keynote speech (granted it was 10 key features of Lion, still, a developer preview [or any type of preview for that matter] should stick to its self-definition: a preview).

Even the more consumer-friendly 2-minute Google Wave promotional video is mired in an arguably speedy-conceptually-esoteric framework.

2. Because Facebook Exists

The reason why we know Google+ is designed well is because, when we look at it, we know what to do with it. We know what to do with it because it practically mirrors Facebook, which we are all pre-disposed to. This is a case where we know who the chicken is, and who the egg is.

No Facebook, no Google+

Yay competition!