Size Matters: Think Piece On Google Plus Usage, Social Connectivity, And Outreach In A Time Of Massive Change

Size Matters: Think Piece On Google Plus Usage, Social Connectivity, And Outreach In A Time Of Massive Change
Or, It's In The Way That You Use It, Like Eric Clapton Said

It's In The Way That You Use It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP1AFDDJoeE

Re:
Is it bigger than a breadbasket? Revisiting size estimates of Google+

That was six years ago.

Four major communities that no longer exist are
a) G+ Public Health; had enormous potential and over 480K members including me. Was not managed, got trashed by porn, killed off in 2017.
b) G+ London And The United Kingdom; the most important by far of all the European G+ communities and the only one that got real traction.
Went from 70K members to 110K members.
Got massively politicized in 2017, following the Manchester jihad bombing slaughter, then was killed off in late 2017.
c) A very large and unmoderated G+ Islamist group Dr. Zakir Naik that was regularly [ daily ] used for counter-jihad and arguing with Muslims. This group had over 600K members, maybe 750K. Good times! It was killed in 2017.
d) The key politics group on G+, which had 20K members in 2016, and was killed off by early 2017. This was replaced by G+ Fox News Opinion, which has grown to 22K or so members. This is where we all gather for serious smashface.

The Europeans simply do not know how to establish good communities on G+. It is really pathetic. With regard to Europe the Europeans are pretty much all no shows, except for the small number of EU fanatics [ with whom it is impossible to reason ].

Two major communities that continue to this day are
a) G+ Voices Of Africa, at about 115K. I post there so they can get some REAL news about Africa. Mostly trivial and completely missing all the big issues, like plague, civil war, jihad, and migration.
b) G+ Harry Potter, at about 960K. Much loved by many and very active. There and elsewhere I provided the first real info on a forward path after G+.

There are many major technology groups and health groups on G+.
I will not list stacks of these here.
Some fairly active. I could list at least ten G+ groups that range from 300K to 1M members or more. In half an hour I could probably list twenty.
They are very diverse.

I am on so many Google Plus groups that a bunch of them do not fit in my G+ Communities set, maybe eight or nine.

It appears very possible or probable that my own engagement and knowledge of G+ communities is far deeper and broader than pretty much all other G+ users, due to engagement in numerous languages and many unrelated areas. In a sense I am a major political and social organizer here. [ Even tho my own set of subscribers is rather small, I get the job done. ]

I will not be giving the big list of major G+ communities here. But the social connectivity we lose next August is truly massive. [ To me this is completely devastating. ]

We do NOT know how active overall memberships are. It is quite likely that half or more of many major groups are members who basically walked away from those groups or from G+ altogether.
There is no way to tell.

For example, the simple aggregate count of G+ group memberships where I have posted [ usually repeatedly posted ] highest quality professional Buddhist teaching is roughly four point one million to four point two million accounts.

For obvious reasons, this total should be immediately cut in half due to multiple group memberships, and some huge groups are mostly [ not completely ] dormant.
A mostly dormant group can be "tickled" into multiple responses on an older thread, and I have done that.

My expectation for actual engagement of this kind is that if I post a Buddhist teaching to a million to three million people on one or more groups, the actual viewership of the post, the return, is less than ten thousand.

So I can "reach four million people in one year" in giving Buddhist teaching. But the actual outcome is that I effectively engage maybe ten thousand people in a given year with this outreach, perhaps twenty thousand at most.

Nevertheless this work is highly important for me as a guru because over the last thirty months I have posted here well more than eighty percent of ALL the actual Buddhist teaching for the entire platform.
And also because literally no one else knew and cared to get this job done. Simply put, English speaking Buddhists go on Buddhist web sites, not here. And that is obviously major social failure.
[ Some Buddhist groups on G+ are all posts in Asian languages such as Thai and Sinhalese, and have thirty thousand to sixty thousand people. That is not outreach. ]

Realistically, when you look at all the many groups, the relative weight is that I post above ninety percent of all the real Buddhist teaching here, and on some groups close to ninety nine percent.
But for present purposes we will just say eighty percent of the total Buddhist teaching across the entire platform.

Quantity of engagement is one dimension of outreach and social discourse, quality is another, and dialectics and debate constitute a third.
A fourth is the very unusual kind of work I do, which is building social and cultural bridges. I do that a lot.
There is a tremendous amount of work to do on this social platform before next summer, and I will continue to do that as time allows.
This is because I see no true replacement for Google Plus.

The personal and professional loss for me when this platform goes away is completely devastating. I also no doubt lose more G+ trolls and G+ troll moderators than basically anyone else due to my unusual philosophical, spiritual, social, and political orientations.
Being a Druid class old school scholar and Asian type mystic, free speecher and counter-jihad activist and all. Many or most people probably think I make all that stuff up.

Nevertheless my approach to communication on this platform has always been functional and realistic and oriented towards actual responsible engagement.
My fundamental perspective is that dishonesty does not work, not in the long run. And I play a very very long game.

I am certainly one of the more important outreach people to help others here find forward migration paths and I have tons more work to do in that area over the next two plus months.
I know how to do the work and I do it. SOMEONE has to know how this stuff works. [ I am a very serious and capable systems analyst. The federal class / military class kind of systems analyst. Which you never ever see over at Mafiasoft. ]

Much of my work is simply connecting people with resources, as in many many people with many many resources.
That is real social value, and it means a whole lot to me. Especially in this time of gradually mounting aggression, confusion, incoherence and breakdown.
There are. . .very major difficulties down the road. For vast numbers of people.
My own perspective is that things look really grim.
Real teamwork and real social connectivity are of the highest importance.
The deeper strategy and goal is to uplevel ourselves and others, if that makes any sense.
And the key tactical approach and key strategy for that will always connectivity, solving the famous Last Mile Problem, hundreds and thousands of times.
Connectivity always lists as the top three items on the list.
Like "Location, location, location" in real estate.

My social toolkit includes a very broad range of news sources. Not because I want to. I would rather avoid politics altogether. But I can't. Especially as politics becomes gets more dirty, difficult, and dangerous and life threatening.
Everything is on the line, and I am one of those people who give a damn. [ No doubt Marilyn Ferguson and Fritjof Capra and Rolling Thunder would be very proud of me. ]

In short, things are really bad all over and they will only get worse, I promise you.
The overall problem is deeper and broader destabilization on All Levels that develops over the next several generations. Only a few people think about that stuff.
Yet these are revolutionary times. Look around! So it is now time to be brutally honest and get real real serious. Maybe that makes sense.

I have tons of teaching work to do here in just a few months. Miles to go before I sleep. And no matter how much I do it will never be half what is needed. Yet still better than nothing. I feel like I have to do the work of a whole UN level NGO. And obviously that is not possible.

I badly badly needed this platform to stay up thru 2020. Losing G+ next year is a miserable effing disaster. Bloody 'Ell!

Albert Camus said: "Now the only moral value is courage. . .We have nothing to lose but everything, so let us begin."
It feels that way. Devil take the hindmost.

"It's in the way that you use it. It comes and it goes."
Basic Buddhist teaching, done western style.

Eric Clapton once more:
Eric Clapton - It's In The Way That You Use It - Live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L55DbKUHwxY