MUST READ: Congress demands answers from Google over Glass privacy concerns

Topic: Social Enterprise

Top execs get more private, even less social on Google+

Summary: Last week, some top Google executives and engineers shut off access to the list of people they follow. Yesterday, those execs locked things down even further, hiding the list of people who follow them. Here's how they did it.

Ed Bott

By for The Ed Bott Report |

Last week, I noticed a curious fact: many top Google execs and engineers had big follower counts but appeared to have no friends.

Today, I decided to pay a follow-up visit to Social Statistics, where the original list came from.

Surprise! That list has changed radically. Previously, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Google+ head Vic Gundotra were in the top 5 (behind Mark Zuckerberg and ahead of Robert Scoble) on Google+, as measured by number of followers. Today their names are completely missing from the top 100, along with a whole bunch of other Googlers.

Indeed, if you go to those pages, you will now find no indication of how many people are following them. Here, see for yourself:

A note at the top of the Social Statistics leader board acknowledges the sudden change:

Some google+ members have further closed off their accounts last night which means you won't be able to track their follower and following counts. This completely reshuffled the top 100. More information in a post at The Next Web. Why not tweet this news?

At The Next Web, Joel Falconer confirms the changes:

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, who created SocialStatistics.com and is a co-founder of The Next Web, says that Matt Cutts, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Vic Gundotra and Marissa Mayer all changed their profiles overnight and consequently dropped out of the top 100.

They’re not using a secret, insider-only option. This is just a further tightening of the privacy settings that I documented here last week. Follow those instructions to return to this dialog box, which shows the default settings.

Indeed, if you want to go stealth on Google+, all you have to do is clear both of those checkboxes. I just confirmed that clearing the two checkboxes immediately makes one’s profile look just like Zuckerberg’s, or Page’s, or Brin’s.

And once again, I feel compelled to ask the question I asked last week: If Google feels that standardizing on these settings is important for their privacy, why isn’t it the default for the rest of us?

Topics: Social Enterprise, Apps, Google, Networking

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21 comments
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  • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

    <I>"And once again, I feel compelled to ask the question I asked last week: If Google feels that standardizing on these settings is important for their privacy, why isn?t it the default for the rest of us?"</I>

    Simple: All your data are belong to them.
    The one and only, Cylon Centurion
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

      @Cylon Centurion
      But they do it for great justice! Now take off every zig!
      x I'm tc
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

        @jdakula <br>The comment from the OP doesn't make any sense (read my reply below) and neither does your sarcasm that you posted in response.

        Edit: Do you even know what justice means?
        anono
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

        @jdakula I dont know if you guys will agree with me but no social media website is safe.
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        lorisinclair
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

      @Cylon Centurion
      "All your data are belong to them."

      Please read the article before you comment. This is about privacy settings. Your data is already in their servers (as you have already uploaded it) regardless of your privacy settings.

      In terms of your actual data, let me know when you can download your pictures from facebook. Contacts are easy enough to download through Yahoo mail, but even at that facebook is doing everything it can to prevent users from keeping your own data.
      anono
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

        @anono Yes, I strogly agree with your statement "All your data are belong to them" all our data ia easily accessible to them.
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        lorisinclair
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

      @Cylon Centurion This is still early in the beta, ya know.
      JoeFoerster
      Reply Vote

  • Because...

    Google assumes that you're in Google+ for the purpose of sharing. That makes sense. People who want more privacy will go into their settings and make the change. You said yourself that it's as easy as two checkboxes. This is really a non-issue.
    lostarchitect
    Reply Vote

    • They could ask the question during setup

      @lostarchitect

      They could easily ask people during setup whether they want their settings to be private or public. Instead they default to completely public knowing that most people who sign up will not be sophisticated enough to find and change the default settings.

      Defaults matter.
      Ed Bott
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

        @Ed Bott Usually Google gets this right; they ask if you want to be tracked when you set up an Android smartphone. If enough people complain to Google about it, they will likely make it easier to find or add it to the setup.<br><br>That being said, there are times when Google ignores customer requests even though there is a large portion of customers demanding it. This is why there are no delivery and read message return receipts in gmail. If you use Outlook with imap to access gmail--or any other standalone mail client-you can get this functionality because it is a message header flag being added.
        Scott Raymond
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

        @Ed Bott I suppose. But as I said, most people signing up WILL want to be public, and those who don't WILL know they need to look at their privacy settings.
        lostarchitect
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

        @Ed Bott
        Considering how much you struggled to find the setting in the first place (I looked for privacy first thing and found this setting in 5 mins), I am not surprised that you think this will be too sophisticated for most people.
        anono
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

        @Ed Bott

        When you sign up you are prompted to define your privacy settings. It's easy enough to do it when you create an account. Otherwise, as has been pointed out, you can modify your settings pretty quickly.
        arquay@...
        Reply Vote

      • Visual and conceptual clarity matter more

        @Ed Bott Defaults count so much when the visual interface gives no clue as what the settings are or how the data is structured. One has to give Google credit for making the structure visually and conceptually clear: if you want to change the privacy settings on any particular group ("circle") - or any other of its properties, composition, sharing relationships - you know exactly where to look. It actually becomes a pleasure to manage the circles.
        overnout
        Reply Vote

  • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

    Sounds anti-social to me.

    --rj
    Roger_Jennings
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

    I see The Microsoft Report goes off topic again.
    Alan Smithie
    Reply Vote

    • Too true

      That and I do wonder if Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, the President etc etc blah blah would ever have a public social networking presence, or for that matter any kind of social networking presence. If anyone thinks that that would be a good idea I think they're clearly delusional.
      ego.sum.stig
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Top execs get more private, even less social on Google

      @Alan Smithie
      The funny thing by trying to make it sound like he made a great accomplishment by finding a simple privacy setting (who doesn't look for privacy first thing after joining a social networking site, especially after facebook), he actually proves himself to be a complete moron.
      anono
      Reply Vote

  • It is wise

    to maximize privacy with a new product and spend time learning it to reach a comfort level where surfacing personal information is appropriate.

    How is this common-sense approach so surprising?
    Dietrich T. Schmitz, *~* Your Linux Advocate
    Reply Vote

  • ZZZZZzzzzzzz.

    An anti-social "social" network? Great. Just what the world needs.
    frizzllefry
    Reply Vote
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