I've never been too fond of social media. I had a MySpace like everyone, but I didn't really know what to do with it. I opened a Facebook account because everyone else seemed to be doing it, and I only tackled LinkedIn and Twitter because it seemed important for my career and networking.
The only social media platform I was ever truly excited by was Google+, which might come as a surprise to many of you. If only it had been invented by anyone other than Google! Now it's just another forgotten attempt at toppling the juggernaut that is Facebook. This is honestly sad, because Google+ had a heck of a lot going for it.
It reinvented social sharing with ideas that felt genuinely better
I loved Google+ because it had us all running around in circles—literally. Dad jokes aside, "Circles" were the core innovation of Google+ and it just made so much sense to me. Instead of having a different social media platform for friends, family, and professional relationships, you'd simply sort everyone you're connected with into circles.
So if you wanted your friends to see what you were up to over the weekend, but not your nosy aunt or your boss, you'd share it with the appropriate circle. If you want everyone to see something, you just share it with all your circles. This was and still is the clearest way I've seen to control your audiences on social media. Other platforms have since brought their own version of this idea, but I don't even bother using it on sites like Facebook because it's not intuitive. In fact, I'm of the opinion that it's not intuitive on purpose!
It delivered standout features years ahead of everyone else
If Google+ had been released a few years later, it might actually have done better because many of its features were ahead of their time. Google Hangouts, in particular, would just be seen as normal today. It was a cross-platform messaging app that integrated into the Google ecosystem, which included Google+. Honestly, at the time, it was the best overall Android messaging app.
Google+ aside, however, Google has had a lot of swings at making a messaging app both before and after Hangouts. It just doesn't seem to give them enough time to hit their stride before messing with things. I also liked the way Google+ ranked things that ended up in your feed. This was long before the current rage-baiting approach to dumping things on the " For you " page.
The integration with other services like Google Photos was also pretty slick. Google+ is actually the service that made me used to the idea that when I took a photo with my phone it would be automatically uploaded to the cloud.
Google’s massive ecosystem should have been its secret weapon
That integration, and the wide variety of cloud services Google provides, should have cemented Google+ as a long-term player in the social media world. Google was best positioned to take on Facebook, and so many people were already signed up for its other services that there was little friction in the way of using Google+.
YouTube, Gmail, Android, Google Search, and all the other aspects of the ecosystem could've been tied together seamlessly with Google+ at the center, but it just didn't work out.
For me, one of the biggest issues with Google+ is that it didn't look or feel cohesive, and, honestly, it was pretty ugly to boot. Facebook's user experience was superior, but I was willing to look past that because it could be fixed, and the promise of having one account and one service that covered all my private, family, and social needs was worth some rough spots.
But Google’s growth tactics backfired and alienated users
Social media platforms live and die by their growth rates. However, comparison is the thief of joy, and while Google+ had a steady number of users, it just didn't look very healthy compared to the hundreds of millions of people using Facebook. So Google had the bright idea of taking the users of one of its biggest successes—YouTube—and forcing anyone who wanted to comment on a video to link their YouTube account with Google+. The backlash was enormous, as CNN reported at the time . There were over 30,000 comments on the announcement post and several online petitions to reverse the decision.
A major part of the dissent was related to Google+ having a real-name policy, and as the frequent abuse I receive on my own YouTube channel shows, YouTube commenters like to be anonymous. Ironically, Facebook today has a real-name policy too.
I deleted my Google+ account in 2015, but the service would keep going until 2019 after Google announced its end the prior year. With news of a massive data breach in Google+ breaking soon after that announcement, the final nail was completely driven in. Yet another set of great ideas driven six feet under through bad luck and even worse decision-making.
