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Google+ phases out incoming stream

Google is set to axe its ‘incoming stream’ from Google+, in an effort to keep things simple for users. Engineering Manager Dave Besbris quietly announced the changes in a Google+ post , stating: “The ‘incoming’ stream was a part of Google+ from the very start and it served an important purpose at the time to help discover others on Google+. “Since then however we’ve added a suggested user list, What’s Hot, the ability to share circles and in-product search with saved searches.” Through the incoming stream, users could see posts and activity of others who followed them but whom they didn’t follow themselves – however, critics argued the feature was too confusing. The move away from its ‘incoming stream’ comes in direct response to user frustration, and tweaks to Google+ have incorporated some of the features of the incoming stream to other aspects of the social networking site. “We’ve also greatly improved our friend suggestion algorhithms. these changes all serve the same purpose that incoming originally did: connecting people,” Besbris said. “Based on your feedback and our user research, we learned that the “incoming” stream was a very confusing part of Google+. Not surprisingly, this feedback was reflected in very low usage of the “Incoming” stream compared to the rest of Google+, so we decided to remove it and simplify things.” The young social network has been constantly refining its services to make them more user-friendly since its initial launch – tweaking existing features and introducing new ones. And, with Google’s latest Search plus Your World updates , activity on Google+ is now even more visible in search results – a move that will likely encourage users to engage with the social network even more.

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Google+ phases out incoming stream

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Mozilla’s (intentional) enterprise slow-down

Mozilla has announced that its proposed Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox is a go. The open source outfit will be launching an ESR version of Firefox which will update less frequently for use by enterprises, public institutions and other organisations that centrally manage their Firefox deployments. The release comes in direct response to the criticism Mozilla received over Firefox’s rapid-release development cycle. Corporations and other users had cited concerns that the release schedule didn’t allow enough time for them to certify new releases of the products, as well as concerns that the end-of life policy exposes them to considerable security risk if they remain on older Firefox versions. However, the ESR is an about-face from Mozilla’s position six months ago, when its product director Asa Dotzler said, “Enterprise has never been (and I’ll argue, shouldn’t be) a focus of ours.” But, it now looks like Firefox will, indeed, be making enterprise a focus.

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Mozilla’s (intentional) enterprise slow-down