A daunting question
A few days ago I wrote this:
"Google disappointed her most diehard supporters.
Now that G+ is destined to close we ask for four things:
1) Transparency. We like to know things like:
a) How many people were active users of the platform (so to have an idea how many people were disappointed by this decision)
b) How many posts were published in a daily basis.
c) Countries where G+ was more popular.
2) Give G+ as a gift to humanity.
That means opensource its code and make it possible to run independently from Google.
This won't be the first time where Google is opensourcing a project of her.
3) Give the tools to transfer our work from G+ to Blogger, WordPress or some opensourced social networks.
4) Make Communities, Collections and Events separate services that can have a life of their own, the way photos and hangouts became.
These are some urgently needed steps Google have to take to restore our confidence to her which is currently totally broken.
Otherwise Google is proven to be another rigid inhumane megacorporation like Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook."
I even posted this to Larry Page's G+ page in a post where comments were still open.
The days passed and Google stuff remains silent.
The most disturbing thing about the demise of G+ was the cruel way we were treated by the Google administration. We were left in the dark, the moderators of Google Create and Google EA have vanished and even the official announcement of G+ had the comments closed.
A daunting depressing thought besieges me. Is this because we are actually so few in this platform? Is it probable that the actual active users of the platform were in the range of tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands or millions?
The number of people who signed the petition for keeping G+ alive in change org is stuck below 28.000 for days.
Can we ever know the real number of active G+ users or we are so few that Google is ashamed to inform us?
We have heard the most contradictive statements. There are people who still insist that G+ had millions of active users. But if this is the case where is the backlash?
For those who remember Google Reader, this service had millions of active users for real and the backlash was big and enduring.
How can we know for sure? Only a googler with internal information could shed light in this matter. Can we find one?
For me this question is important so to know what was the real state of G+ before the abrupt shut down announcement.
As about me, I have stated in this community and in my G+ page that I will be here till the last day, keep on adding whoever is a G+ diehard and keep on posting like nothing happened.
In two days I have one hundred more followers. Not bad for a dying platform 😃
I backed up my work and I will keep on participating in this Community so to find the best alternative which will have the most ex G+ users that I met and loved here.
I too was surprised by the low signature count on the petition.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the real secret of why there was so little spam and crap on G+ really was that nobody was using it!
So it challenge is to find a functional, unpopular platform to move too, that won't get abandoned a year or two later.
I suspect the petition count was low so because:
ReplyDelete1. we saw what looked like many, so signed only one.
2. the betrayal is so deep people are tending to contingencies first - have little faith Google will respond to anything.
I'm quite sure Google has underestimated the G+ population. A few signs from my perspective:
1. a number of use are observing a surge of returnees - people who have been less active returning to not lose contact with friends made here
2. some of the heavy weights are seeing a sharp increase in followers. Just one example - an increase of a 1000 in a day.
3. Im checking out alternatives - it's quite something to experience the exodus of people who are trying to save their human community.
I'm with you dude. Until the very last second. I'll shut off the lights, you lock the doors. We'll get a beer afterwards, while we talk about the good times we had here.
ReplyDeleteThis is the only platform I've been active on since my first post in 2013. Never had a Facebook (not planning to start now either) made a Twitter last year, but barely use it, no Instagram, no nothing. Die-hard G+ user. Always true to the almighty Google God, that turns out to be Satan.
I'm giving this MeWe thing a try, but I feel like it's not going to fulfill my needs. The loss of G+ is going to leave a big hole in my online life.
Sigh...
How Events was never integrated into Calendar just boggles the mind.
ReplyDeleteJust read this and signed the petition; I don’t know what took me so long. I really do care about this place.
ReplyDelete"The most disturbing thing about the demise of G+ was the cruel way we were treated by the Google administration. We were left in the dark, the moderators of Google Create and Google EA have vanished" -- this truth about the subject here is enough for the me not giving a phuk about Google+ anymore. Why should I care if even they don't?!! :-/
ReplyDeleteGoogle+ is/was part of my life, trusted friend everyday from the beginning, now he broke all...feelings, emotions investments, sadness, happiness, love, friendship, all what we are and Google is not. Not anymore. This is the prove that tell us that Google can't be trust. Google can do everything he wants, he can close Gmail, Youtube, any of his products anytime he wants. This is the prove that for Google hundreds of millions people are not important. It's like Google make a generous gift to facebook or others. Closing G+ is the biggest mistake and I wish to be a very expensive costs for them.
ReplyDeleteKerem Gogus You have a point but this place more than any other Google service, was ours. Or to put it more empathically, this place was the only Google service that was ours.
ReplyDeleteIt was the only massive Google service with no ads, it was a place we could freely post our content, interact with awesome people, having meaningful conversations and we supported it long ago Google had shown that it doesn't really care.
We care because it wasn't a typical Google product but a pleasant aberration to its business and that's why the demand to opensource it and give this service back to the community is so reasonable. Because this place was defacto supported by the community of its users and not by Google herself.
If Google does not want my engagement on a platform of theirs, I want to switch to a place which is not owned by a company.
ReplyDeleteGreg Batmarx I agree with every word. But it is their product and they simply decided to cancel despite all the facts you have pointed out.
ReplyDeleteI think the petition count was low because most of us realize that Google doesn't care about such things. They have enough trouble caring about serious problems with invalid account lockouts, bogus youtube demonetization and other serious stuff.
ReplyDeleteEverything else Google killed they did the same cold brutal way. People may laugh at yahoo but they've kept groups limping along even though it's a dinosaur and not just dumped all their users - not so Google.
reader, health, knol, orkut ... even paid products like revolv.
I'd never buy a Googe nest product because one day that's magically just going to turn into yet another google-brick. I'll never buy a chromebook because who knows what will happen to chrome long term. It's probably safe but if it starts to go astray its brick time.
It's a good business practice to ruthlessly cull failing product lines, but a good business doesn't do it by dumping the customers in the poop. Thats one reason you see companies around that buy up dying products and support them for a decade while their customers move slowly off.
I doubt open sourcing would work either. Google builds things on top of their infrastructure so you are talking something designed to run across a massively scaled cluster of system services that are simply not going to be replacable by postgres and a big PC.
bizarre how google social shuts down after Facebook gets ransacked . ...two of the biggest companies in the world u know
ReplyDeleteAlan Cox I agree about Google doesn't give a stuff what people think and will do what they want to regardless, so what is the point of a petition. As for the Chromebook, it wouldn't be a brick if Chrome OS ceased because Linux could always be installed on it.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the point of a petition is symbolic. It's a way to show that there are people who care regardless of the outcome. That's why I signed.
ReplyDeleteDamn. We need to spread the info like fire! Even to people who don't know what G+ is!
ReplyDeleteAlan Cox indeed, I actually don't want to have Google+ keep going. I want something community driven
ReplyDeleteI didn't even realize the petition was out there until today, but I will go check it out. Maybe there are others like me? We mainly used G+ for family connection and sharing photos. It's been really great, and it is sad to see it go. There are similar services out there, but nothing that captures the whole package.
ReplyDeleteThey owe us money for the data we made .. they sold .. lets class action sue ?
ReplyDeleteI agree to two and three. WordPress would be a great alternative.
ReplyDeleteI think the simple truth is G+ was costing money google was no longer will to spend. Perhaps google should have thought about monetizing the platform with ads.
ReplyDeleteMike Kennedy there were other ways of monetizing besides ads!
ReplyDeleteIf their accountants and shareholders tell them to kill Google+ they will. They killed Google reader. If they'd kept with it for a few more years they'd have had a success story.
ReplyDeleteRichard Azia they should have checked in with their strategic marketers. G+ users are also users and ambassadors of Google paying products. It’s not an accident that Ad sense revenue is tanking...
ReplyDeleteAlso the posts providing alternatives to all Google products are increasingly popular...
su ann lim I would say the same about their de-monetising the long tail videos on youtube. The videos that have very few viewers but appeal to a narrow specialist niche. They get the revenue from the ads that are displayed whereas we just provide videos people search for and click on.
ReplyDeleteI don't like Google's shift to mass appeal products. It's undermining the fundamentals of communities such as Google Plus.
When I grew tired of the silence on Facebook I decided that I would re-invest that time on my blog powered by Wordpress.
I've had the same reaction with Google + and their desire to shut down. it takes weeks or months to find a community with which to have conversations.
I don't want to spend weeks or months on a new platform sorting out interesting content from junk yet again. That's why I haven't spent time on Diaspora or Mewe.
Even paying communities like App.net eventually shut down . We'll see how long Google+ survives.
Personally, this is the first that I've heard about the petition. And since the bid to save reader failed, I'm skeptical of it being anything that Google would losten to no matter how many signatures it garners.
ReplyDeleteMany of the diehard users are also in foreign countries where they don't know about the petition either. The numbers may be "small" in the USA but am sure it was higher in other countries just by seeing the amount of plus ones on many posts from Japan and Mexico and others.
ReplyDelete