Some of you have probably heard that Google Plus is shutting down. Personally, I'm not overly convinced of the reasons why. For example, lots of company's experience data leaks and yet you don't see them falling on their sword? Also, a company like Google should be able to resolve this (As they did) pretty quickly. I'm also not convinced by this accusation that "Hardly anybody uses it!" that accusation is rubbish, no honestly it is. Ask yourself, why would Google only kill it for Joe Public and yet not only maintain it for businesses but also roll out updates and enhancements? No, there's something else going on here and in my view, it's endemic of Google. Over the years there have been lots of services that they offer [for free] falling by the wayside after a year or two. With that in mind, the latest twist has hit the social media networks. Morgan Knutson, a former developer on Google Plus, has started spilling his guts on Twitter. I would say, when reading his post(s), keep in mind that stuff written by a disgruntled ex-worker is never going to be a glowing endorsement of your organisation.
Be warned, his discourse is very long, almost warranting a tl;dr and is littered with lots of To be continued.... The gist of what he is saying is actually more to do with himself rather than any technical issues or difficulties with Google Plus. Most of it seems to be taken up with observations on people he doesn't like or people he feels do not like him with the odd smattering of deriding peoples work as either “Inconsequential” or "Tacky".
Now some of you may be shocked at these so-called "Revelations" but having worked in business since I was eleven or twelve years old, my father used to take me to work with him helping out with stuff like answering the phone, sending faxes and making people drinks. I can safely say with first-hand experience that I've worked in very similar environments over the years, to be honest, that's how it is for a lot of company's so I actually found it rather refreshing that this false image of Google being a Nirvana of tranquillity and love just wasn't true or at least certainly not true in a fair few departments. But let's get back to Google plus. I always thought it was a good service although I never did get the hang of Pages and Communities mainly because they didn't offer any crossover to the main G+ profile. I like the fact that it wasn't Facebook which is a service that actually annoys me sometimes although that's a bit unfair as it's not Facebook so much as the types of individuals FB attracts. The other advantage was that it offered the ability to post more than 140 characters which was the limit on Twitter when I first joined G+
I've probably said this before, but I and a lot of my FOSS Community" friends came from the now defunct identi.ca literally as identica was going down in flames G+ sprang up. While it wasn't Open Source at the time not many people (Within my group of friends) wanted to use Twitter or Facebook and so G+ seemed an acceptable alternative given that at the time Google did have the business strapline of "Be Nice!" which, I might add, they dropped a while back. I'm going to miss G+ I often wish Steemit was a bit more like G+ especially when it comes to making a comment on a post you resteem, I want to know why someone resteemed something or at the very least I want to tell you why I did otherwise it just looks like I trawled through the posts resteeming at random for no good reason or even endorsement on the post content.
Over the years I've had lots of people trying to tell me G+ was dead, nobody uses it. I suspect they're all currently sitting in front of their monitors with a smug face saying "Told you so!"
Congratulations @dickturpin! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Award for the number of upvotes received
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I'll miss G+. I found plenty of good people to follow, including yourself. Now I have to migrate elsewhere to get the same feed. G+ had no ads and I think the user interface is one of the best. I agree about Steemit re-steem. I want to say why I shared a post. Steemit is really better for longer posts, but I may need something else for short ones and where I just want to share a link. Not sure what that will be yet. Looking at Diaspora and Friendica. May give Mastodon another go, but these things eat time.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
You do know why it's called Dire Spora don't you? ;-)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I've heard rumours, but I've not been there in a while. None of these things is essential. I say we should go back and use RSS. I still read a lot of blogs that way.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I'm no longer a FOSS sponge like I used to be. I used to spend hours trawling all the feeds making sure I was 'up to speed' on everything, these days I'm constantly reactive rather than proactive.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I used to keep up with that stuff, but these days things 'just work' and I'm not always waiting for new releases. I'm still interested in innovative stuff, but I'm lacking time to play with it all.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Centralized IT is dangerous (I explained what's going on with social media censorship in that post). I deleted my FB and Twitter pages as well. Anyone using these will be subject to abuse of their private information in the future and it will be used against you by people in positions of authority. Do not make it easy for them.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
So the Holy Trinity is: Security, Privacy and Anonymity.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
You aren't secure in this situation which is why distributed IT is being developed. So your answer is to just give up and allow authority to screw you over? If you decide to opt out, there is a correct way to minimize risk. VPN's, TOR, encryption, physical device security...
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit