Here are some of my experiences with the various g+ alternatives that I found worth sharing, so maybe they are...

Here are some of my experiences with the various g+ alternatives that I found worth sharing, so maybe they are useful for someone else, too.

All of them are of course different from how they work and what their business model is.

■ business model, "sustainability"
MeWe is commercially operated, and they promise to respect and defend your privacy. That's nice. But there is no guarantee this could not change anytime, for example when they are get bought up by some "big player" once they have reached a critical mass (just remember what has happened to WhatsApp).

And once you've reached a certain limit on data (think images and videos you may upload), it's not free any more and you have to pay for it. That said, I have to add that I have absolutely no issues to pay for something that's worth it.

You will see ads there, but they are not personally targeted, at least to what they say.

Their sources are closed source, so there's no way to find out what's going on behind the curtain.

Minds is commercially operated, too. As far as I understood their business model is based on "boosts". You publish content and if you want to see it spread all around their platform, you have to pay for it.

On the other hand, you can also make money if your content is liked and reshared a lot. The "currency" used internally is based on ethereum.

Their sources are open, so you can verify what's going on.

The open source "federated networks" such as Diaspora, Mastodon, Friendzilla and so on actually have no real "business model". They run because some people are willing to operate them in their free time. If you are in bad luck and the node/pod or whatever they call the server you are using to log into the network goes down for whatever reason, your data is lost.

■ data protection
You may have a good or bad opinion on EU data protection regulations, but nevertheless they are in effect to protect more than 550 million people living in the EU.

None of the alternatives I have tried, both the commercially and community operated ones, even remotely meet up to the requirements laid out in the current EU data protection laws.

Depending on the platform, you may or may not be able to download your personal data, some have absolutely no or insufficient information on the cookies they use and a lot of other things that I find really frightening.

If I had to choose one of the platforms solely based on how they handle privacy, I couldn't choose one.

■ eye candy and usability
Those are highly subjective things, of course.

My personal favorites here are MeWe and Minds. Nice and responsive design, performance has been decent. The open source alternatives are just "lacking", particularly when it comes to eye candy, to say at least.

Sometimes things like removing someone from your list contacts can be quite difficult in Disapora, for example, but if you use it regularly, you'll certainly learn to overcome the obstacles.

■ groups
MeWe clearly leads the way here, but minds isn't bad either. They have almost everything you can think of. You can moderate and ban for example. But both lack the ability to add group categories like we know from g+ or to pin posts.

Diaspora and the other "federated" are mainly based on tags. You post something and add one or more tags to it. At the same time you can "subscribe" to tags. So if someone publishes a post containing a tag you have subscribed to, you will see it in your "stream" or however they call it.

Some of them allow you to filter this a little bit more, for example only displaying content matching your subscribed tags and your contacts. Sounds nice, but if you think of conventional groups of 1000s of members like we have here on g+ or elsewhere, I don't think this will scale.

■ mobile use
All off the networks I've tried have official or unofficial mobile client applications (at least on Android).

But again, just like I said with eye candy and usability above, the commercial offerings in my opinion lead here.

And some of them (like pluspora) are quite usable without a dedicated app just by accessing them on a mobile browser.

■ the bottom line
All of this is based on my personal experience, so I might just be very very wrong about just everything :) ... if I am, please let me know, I'm more than willing to learn!

Unfortunately, based on what I've seen, I have not clue yet where I'll end up eventually.

What a stupid thing to give up g+ instead of seeing its potential and developing it into something great!