Nonplussed
It appears my formerly preferred social media outlet is being shut down.
Google has announced that they are finally shutting down the "consumer-facing" portion of Google+ over the next ten months. Which comes as a bit of a surprise to me... I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner!
I'd been a large proponent of Google+ and used it as my primary social media outlet for both my blogs and groups for years. To me, it was functionally the better system. I preferred the layout, the text formatting, the ability to categorize people, posts, groups, circles, and collections as I saw fit. I also liked the near-seamless integration with my blogs and Hangouts messenger app.
I much preferred the Google+ experience to that of Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or Twitter. Unfortunately, I was one of the few who did, and Google+ will now be a mere footnote in Internet history, and surely the butt of a number of jokes.
I'd killed most of my social media accounts last year, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, mostly because I was sick of the human race (fuckin' trolls!), but also because of security concerns. I joined the Fediverse full-time and haven't really looked back.
I've learned a lot participating in the Fediverse, but I ended up reactivating my Facebook and Google+ earlier this year. I did this to keep up with family news, but also because I started blogging again and wanted to announce new posts to a wider audience.
Facebook was exactly as I left it, but Google+... Google+ had changed.
Most of the G+ groups I'd joined were either gone, or taken over by spammers. My favourite urban cycling group is now flooded with porn, or spam from the Subcontinent. Ditto for my urban photography group and retrocomputing groups. In the space of a few months, Google+ was dead to me.
It was fun while it lasted. These days, apart from the odd FB post, I spend my days in the Fediverse, a decentralized federation of private Mastodon, GNU Social, Pleroma etc servers. Better conversation, smaller crowds, not to mention better weeding-out of trolls, bots, and assholes. And it's open-source!
Plus is dead. All hail the Fediverse!
Google has announced that they are finally shutting down the "consumer-facing" portion of Google+ over the next ten months. Which comes as a bit of a surprise to me... I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner!
I'd been a large proponent of Google+ and used it as my primary social media outlet for both my blogs and groups for years. To me, it was functionally the better system. I preferred the layout, the text formatting, the ability to categorize people, posts, groups, circles, and collections as I saw fit. I also liked the near-seamless integration with my blogs and Hangouts messenger app.
I much preferred the Google+ experience to that of Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or Twitter. Unfortunately, I was one of the few who did, and Google+ will now be a mere footnote in Internet history, and surely the butt of a number of jokes.
I'd killed most of my social media accounts last year, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, mostly because I was sick of the human race (fuckin' trolls!), but also because of security concerns. I joined the Fediverse full-time and haven't really looked back.
I've learned a lot participating in the Fediverse, but I ended up reactivating my Facebook and Google+ earlier this year. I did this to keep up with family news, but also because I started blogging again and wanted to announce new posts to a wider audience.
Facebook was exactly as I left it, but Google+... Google+ had changed.
Most of the G+ groups I'd joined were either gone, or taken over by spammers. My favourite urban cycling group is now flooded with porn, or spam from the Subcontinent. Ditto for my urban photography group and retrocomputing groups. In the space of a few months, Google+ was dead to me.
It was fun while it lasted. These days, apart from the odd FB post, I spend my days in the Fediverse, a decentralized federation of private Mastodon, GNU Social, Pleroma etc servers. Better conversation, smaller crowds, not to mention better weeding-out of trolls, bots, and assholes. And it's open-source!
Plus is dead. All hail the Fediverse!
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