RIP, Google+: long ailing and finished off by a security bug

#22

That’s still a thing, but for some odd reason you have to pay to use it. Probably still completely clogged with spam tho.

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#23

Probably. And have you heard of this thing called email? All the cool kids are using it. It has BCC and everything!

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#24

That’s exactly what I’ve been wondering. When it started, there was email, all I remember is that it was imposed, I had to do something to deactivate it, which I did. I didn’t miss anything, but they might have started with an explanation.

The fact that years later I have no real idea what it was indicates the failure. It never propagated enough for me to know about it from other sources, or to become curious enough to look.

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#25

Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Global Warming
------Four really bad things humanity has inflicted on itself

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#26

Cool, so maybe now I can finally open an account on that cesspit of doxxing called YouTube and have a nickname without signing into a different throwaway Google account? Please?

By the time I could join, and send invites to my friends, they had lost interest, and once I realized I had no friends on it… I didn’t have any use for it.

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#27

It is silly to suggest that I email pictures of me and my kid at a playoff game to my friends. I mean, some would want to get that in their inbox and some wouldn’t. But lots look on facebook and interact.

This superior attitude towards a ubiquitous useful service doesn’t help anyone.

Sure, I could email to grandma and granpa. But I’m not about to do that to work friends or members of various groups I’m in. That’s spam.

Also…I’m pretty aware of email. Let’s not start getting into who’s cool and who’s been online longer. I’ve had an online presence since the 80s when I first was into the BBS scene.

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#28

BONUS: they found out about it in March, but chose not to mention it till now because of “concern it would trigger regulatory backlash”.

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#29

They may have been trying to recreate the interest they generated in Gmail by initially making it invite only. I distinctly remember those few weeks (in 1999? 2000?), when folks were desperately trying to find someone they knew who had an account who would cascade an invite out. The geometric growth of users that created was … I don’t know - kind of a special time?

But, Gmail then was offering something which couldn’t be had anywhere else. G+, on the other hand, was clearly always just another Facebook clone.

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#30

you are not the only person on facebook. i have multiple groupings of people i interact with there, about 90 are either former students or professional colleagues from teaching, another 70 are relatives or extremely close friends, and a further 60 or so are people i met at another social network/music discovery site/game that no longer exists. then there is a final cluster of around 60 who are friends and/or relatives of people from the other three groups who wanted to friend me because their friend/relative talked so much about my travel photos and artistic photos which are the main things i put on facebook.

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#31

speaking of google+ there is also this bit from the oatmeal which proved to be radically optimistic, both about the future of google+ and the ethics of google in general–

http://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter_2012/google_plus

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#32

When I click on it it still comes up. I still can post. So, I guess, fake news?

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#33

And Google Reader, too?

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#34

The graveyard is deliberate. Their whole philosophy is to build a lot of products and kill the less successful ones. Every one killed off probably had some active users, and some of them had a lot. They don’t care. They roll the dice hoping something will hit it big, and if it doesn’t hit big, they roll again. I think that must make it a really sucky place to work (since odds are, the project you are slaving away on will get canned), and it kinda sucks for users too, but it doesn’t suck for the management and shareholders, so they keep at it.

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#35

It’s because a LOT of them use/used Blogger, which integrated nicely. And then you could organize games via video chat on Hangouts (before they split it off on its own).

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#36

It’s sunsetting in August 2019.

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#37

Reader was killed off in part because of Google+ (so as not to have two competing sharing platforms…though having two of something never seems to have stopped Google anywhere else). There’s irony there somewhere, I suppose.

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#38

While I am no fan of Facebook and barely have a presence there I am aghast people are actually suggesting emailing photos to either a group or even a SINGLE person. Really, it just seems rude to me, like “I’m forcing you to use space up for these photos and if you DON’T want them, you’ll have to delete them!”

One of multitudes of ways to share photos online (even Facebook) seems much better to me. Then the people you notify can view the photos at their leisure and save them if they want to. (Though personally, if anyone sent me Facebook links I would ask them not to in the future.)

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#39

This makes me very sad. Despite many calls that G+ was forever a ‘ghost town’ Google Plus was a haven for independent tabletop roleplaying publishing. i was an early adopter shortly after it launched and made many, many friends over the years and watched the community give birth to many RPG products, many of which have gone on to win industry awards. I myself owe my career in the gaming industry to the contacts and friends I made on G+ and will forever be grateful to the network for opening those doors for me. I also suffered a terrible nervous breakdown in late 2015 and got through it largely because of the numerous friends on G+ who took an active interest in my well being. Whatever else people want to say about Google Plus it was for many years home to a vibrant community of creative and intelligent people that I will never forget. Many of us are already looking for a new home for our weird little clutch of gaming enthusiasts and while we will probably find somewhere to land, it won’t ever be the same.

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#40

If it is spam when sent via e-mail, how is it not spam when shared on a social network?

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#41
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