When John Lewis heard that Google+ was shutting down after the discovery of a security bug that left private profile data exposed, it felt like a crushing blow — even though he could see it coming.
Lewis, a freelance writer who has spent nearly eight years living an isolated life in the Costa Rican rainforest, starts almost every morning sipping coffee while chatting with friends on Google+ and reading his feeds on the social network.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/10/google-plus-users-mourn-shutdown.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
Weight loss is more than calories in and calories out. Research using a pool of 10,000 participants. People tend to gain weight back. Differ...
-
Serious about safety? Allow one free checked bag and stop carry on that doesn't fit under the seat. Don't want to "give away&qu...
-
We were in Edmonton so I took the opportunity to visit the Microsoft Store, check out the Go and finally purchased it. I knew there was a ...
In any service in which you opt in to decide who you follow, it's impossible to tell whether the people you interact with are active generally on the service, or are just really active within your very small group. There is stuff going on outside your group that you have no idea about. (For example, I had vaguely heard that FriendFeed had a huge Turkish community, but I had no idea until after the fact that FriendFeed also had a huge Italian community).
ReplyDeleteFor all we know, the CNBC writer just happened to occupy the same circles that John Lewis and Dave Hill occupy, and 90% of the Google+ users truly do leave after five seconds.
Of course, Google+ has no incentive to provide full usage statistics - especially if it undercuts its narrative that it's OK to shut down the service.
Sad to learn it goes away. I've got a few new social friends on it that we share stuff. Now I'll lose them.
ReplyDeleteThe CNBC correspondent communicated to a closed group that I'm in that it wouldn't surprise me was where the others were as well. She may have done so in a couple of other places, too.
ReplyDeleteI don't recognised anyone, but I've added +Peter Vogel to my circles.
ReplyDeleteCass Morrison I've long-suspected a core measuring somewhere in the thousands (10k - 100k, order-of-magnitude), at least among English speakers. With some data justification, see Stone Temple Consulting's active user estimates, based on methodology I'd developed.
ReplyDeleteThe sample in the article draws heavily from Google+ Mass Migration community, myself included.
... and there's a lot of populaton-count discussions going on right now....
ReplyDeleteI guess it's time to see how much (and how) people are willing to pay for social media. I know I'm no Medium but I don't feel I have enough words to create interesting content that could offset the cost of being in the system.
ReplyDeleteCass Morrison It's so cheap it's not worth charging for individually. $0.25/user-year.
ReplyDeleteAggregating blocks of 500-1000 users could work. Maybe.
I'm thinking.
That makes a really low bar to entry.
ReplyDeleteThe board games community is migrating to MeWe. I've created an account there and an exploring it. The service has a similar look to Google+.
ReplyDeleteGene Chiu I might try that app out once Plus is gone.
ReplyDeleteRobbie Fremming I suggest you try alternative services now. That way you have a sense of where you may want to go when G+ shuts down. It will also make the transition easier.
ReplyDeleteGene Chiu yea u got a point. I do use FB and Twitter.
ReplyDeleteCass Morrison It creates some weird economics.
ReplyDeleteTechnical ability (or suitably idiot-proofing and simplifying deployment) becomes the basic limiting factor for hosting your own system, with the addition of other concerns and considerations.
Keep in mind that if you host a single-user box, the per-user costs are higher -- because you cannot get a single-user physical or virtual system that's of sufficiently low specification to make it efficient. That's the dynamics of mass production / scaling. But most of the investment is already sunk-cost due to the needs of end-point broadband modems or LAN routers / firewalls ... so it's effectively a net benefit.
The problem is distributing or providing some sort of technical competence against hacked, out-of-date, or otherwise compromised systems. I've had some thoughts on that.