Why Are You On Google+? Seriously.

Last year I found myself wondering why my posts were not gaining any attention from the 13,000+ followers I have. A quick search on my circlecount.com profile revealed that in 2013 I had gone from 2,870 followers in   January to 13,066 by December. I was blow away by how many people felt I was worthy of being followed, but I also realized that perhaps I was celebrating such an accomplishment a bit too soon.

Granted the stats also show I had a poor number of posts in 2013 (660 is not exactly an super active Google+ user) and that I received nearly 3 times as many comments but still that’s not that many comments considering the number of people who are following me.

I was a bit disappointed as I actually wanted to be a bit famous on G+ and have lots of people follow me and comment on my stuff like some of the more popular Plussians on here. I kept wondering if maybe it was me, my style, the topics I choose. In a way it is partially my fault, those numbers in my stats don’t lie. But I also realized that I was depending on the number of followers I had to thrust me into G+ stardom while ignoring the truth behind that number. A truth I better understood after reading +Jesse Wojdylo post What Does It Mean to Have Over 50,000 Google+ Followers? which spoke about +Eli Fennell , an awesome Plussian and a blog post titled Living with the Google+ Suggested User List Revisited that he wrote. This is when I realized that all my excitement over my 13,000+ followers was nothing more than excitement over a huge number that really means nothing if most of them don’t bother to interact with you.

And thus this conclusion brings me to my question. Why are you on Google+? Seriously. Why? I can’t deny at first I was one of those people who wanted Google+ to become “the social media site to be on” and crush Facebook because to be honest I find Facebook to be boring. I love my family and the few friends I have on FB but I have to be honest and say that I get bored of all the food pictures, selfies, random “what a boring day” short posts and constant pictures of religious images and quotes from a bunch of hypocrites. I’m Catholic but I can’t stand people who claim to be religious and carry themselves as if they do no sins yet seem to have more in common with the devil. But I digress. Basically I found very little interaction on FB that lead to awesome debates, discussion and even arguments on the latest and greatest in tech, what’s in the news or even politics. Nope, all I saw were little “meh” comments, pointless “(insert political party or politician name here) is/are stupid and destroying the country” comments lacking any real educated facts behind them and the too common “silent” comment which really is a post that no on cared to have a word to say about and Liked just because they were use to clicking that damn Like button.

FB is a great place to stay in contact with family and friends (as my wife proves to me daily) but for a person like me who likes to meet new people, actually have conversations, debate a point or topic in order to understand why we think differently and perhaps maybe even rethink my own point of view, FB is not the place for me to do that. FB would be the equivalent of me hanging out at a cheap bar in the worst part of town and me daring to express an opinion that just might differ from everyone else there and then find myself having to duck for cover as the rampage begins and then my pictures and video end up on worldstarhiphop.com instead of Youtube. These days I don’t care much about what social media site is better. The way I see it if FB makes you happy (like it does my wife who has been unable to let go of FB and try G+ more often) then my all means enjoy it.

For me on Google+ I found exactly what I was looking for. A place where people express their thoughts, where people share what they found on the Internet, a place where conversations can actually lead to making friends from all around the world. Some may think that online friends are not real friends but I beg to differ and I have my Secret Santa Gift videos to prove that (Secret Santa Strikes Again & Secret Santa Strikes Again Part 2). I have never been successful at making friends in the real world but have found some awesome people online. Even as far back as 8 years ago when I became a Call Of Duty PC gamer and join a group of people and played with them often. Some who I eventually met in person and who were kind enough to give my some spare PC parts to build the PC I have today because my previous one died on me and left me PCless and thus unable to play with them online.

So I ask again. Why are you on Google+? Why do you bother circling people if you have no intentions of  interacting with them? It makes no sense to me that so many people decided to go out of their way to circle me only to ignore me completely. In all honesty I wouldn’t get mad if my number of followers suddenly dropped dramatically after this article if only those who care about what I write kept following me. I would prefer to know that I am followed not because I was on a few shared circles that people just added to their circles without bother to see who was in them. Makes me feel like a strawberry that was picked only because I happen to be in the bag with a whole bunch of other strawberries and not because I looked good enough to eat myself but I happen to be at the bottom of the bag and if you don’t eat the bag fast enough I end up as waste.

I know what they say about people who assume but I still have to wonder. If you went out of your way to create the G+ profile, perhaps add a profile picture and then follow some people, find shared circles and add people like me to you profile then I have to assume you had more intentions to use G+ than you did to simply have the profile because you were “forced” by Google to have it. And if you had intentions of using G+ then you had intentions of interacting, commenting and maybe even sharing posts of your own. Otherwise “why are you on Google+” if not for the interaction? Maybe you are having trouble understanding Google+, how it works, how to use it, how to make the best of it. If so there are a ton of posts out there specially dedicated to help you learn more about G+. But let me honest about something. No amount of knowledge on G+ will help you if you have no intention of interacting with the rest of the Plussians on G+. The key to G+ is not just how often you post or how many people have a profile on G+, its the interaction. Its commenting on peoples posts and replying back to them on your own posts. That is what counts the most on G+, even more than the shares or +1s everyone does.

If you’re afraid to meet new people then G+ is not the place for you because while many have family and friends who have joined Google+ the foundation of G+ is based on the new people we all meet because unlike FB where most of the people are your list are family and friends, on G+ the best experience is found circling strangers who actually have content worthy of reading and interacting with. Otherwise you will only experience the Ghost Town effect that so many ignorant reviewers, who failed to understand how Google+ works, ranted about before.

There are 2 kinds of Google+ experiences:

The Ghost Town Experience where you only circles friends you found on G+ but are scared to follow strangers because of fears of privacy and of meeting new people but you end up with a mostly empty stream and eventually find your way back to what ever other social media site you used before.

The Awesomeness Of Google+ Experience where you take a chance, treat Google+ following like you do on Twitter and treat commenting and posting like you do on Facebook, combine that with Hangouts, Events, proper circle management and a huge desire to interact and what you get is nothing less than an awesome social media experience that can only be topped by getting to meet some of the awesome people on Google+ in person someday. A Hangouts In Real Life (HIRL) as so many have done on here and I look forward to doing in the near future.

Its your choice. I already made mine.

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What do Facebook stocks and Facebook users have in common?

According to the article linked below it seems that Facebook’s stocks continue to drop but to add insult to injury it seems an analyst has discovered that Facebook users have also been on a decline. Sure it’s nowhere near what the stock is losing but considering the one thing every “Facebook vs Google+” critic has been Facebook’s huge user base, and also taking into consideration that Google+ is gaining more and more users every day, even a few defectors could mean a possible trend on Facebook.

But it’s not like Facebook has anything to do with it. It’s not like Facebook has been consistently messing with peoples private information, changing their emails without any warning, putting more and more ads within the users stream and trying everything possible to turn every Facebook user into a profit.

I am a loyal Google+ user and am not ashamed in any way to admit it. While I have had a Facebook account for a long time I barely visit the site once a day. I actually deleted my original account because I had too many people on my list although 150 people pales in comparison to my wife’s list but still it was a boring list of people who either posted nothing of interest or nothing at all and they interacted with me even less. I may as well have had no one on my list. I choose to delete the account, start a new one and only add family and a few friends, nothing more. The only real reason for having a Facebook account, besides my wife and kids, is because some websites require a Facebook account to register so I sometimes have no choice when i really need to use the website. Otherwise It wouldn’t be as active as it is now.

I have also notice quite a few Google+ users who have stated they ditched Facebook either completely or partially. I guess this analyst may be right. You know what they say about all good things, not that Facebook was good in my opinion but I digress.

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Time to revive the question, is Google+ a Facebook killer?

Image from Mashable.com

We all remember when Google+ first came out the big question back then was “Is Google+ a Facebook killer?” and for a while many spent a lot of time trying to prove that Google+ would not stand a chance against the all mighty Facebook, even posting these comments right on Google+.

But now it has been several months now and Google+ has had many upgrades made to it such expanded search, sharable circles, games and most recently Pages. Facebook has since been constantly updating their site adding new features and changing others in a dash to keep up with the Google+ hype. More often than not I heard complaints about how some people did not like the changes, how their screens looked more cluttered and to make matters worse several privacy issues stories started coming out overshadowing some of these upgrades.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that Google+ is not currently in any position to overthrow Facebook, but there is no denying that although the hype is somewhat gone, it continues to grow and many of those who at first found little interest in Google+ due to lack of people in their circles are slowly getting the hang of it. The problem was (and still is) simple, the whole debate over whether Google+ was a Facebook killer confused people making them think Google+ was just another Facebook when in reality it was much more than that. I’ll explain:

Facebook – is mostly used by people who want to have close connections on a personal level with family and “friends”. They wouldn’t normally add some random stranger because this would give them access to more personal things that they would not normally share outside their family and friend circles (pun intended).

Twitter – is mostly used by people who want to share things with everyone else by allowing anyone to follow them while picking who to follow at their choice. It’s meant more for getting the word out to a larger audience and not so much for chatting.

Google+ – brings the best of both worlds. It gives you Twitters ability to get the word out to everyone interested in hearing it while also allowing you to share with specific people on a more personal level like on Facebook. It’s kinda like having your cake and eating it too.

So in a way all 3 Social Media sites are similar but Google+ has a better chance to shine more in essence possibly dethrone Facebook or at least create a whole new kingdom where people can own a home on each side and travel back and forth to. Why? Well again, it’s simple. Facebook is just that, Facebook, a Social Media site, some of it’s newer features were thru connections with other third party software such as Skype. Google+ on the other hand is not just Google+, it’s also Gmail, Google Reader, Google Voice, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Maps, Picasa, Picnik, Youtube and even Blogger.

Little by little Google is integrating all its apps and services making it a seamless pleasure to go from one to another or to access them from within other apps or services. Google Docs and Youtube can be access from Hangouts, Google Reader articles and Youtube videos can be shared directly to Google+, Picasa, Picnik, Google Maps and Google+ all work together. And best of all they are all connected to Gmail. I look forward to having my Blogger be connected to my Google+ profile.

So after spending so much time on Google+, making “friends”, getting to know people, expanding my techno-knowledge and more, I find myself asking this question once again. Is Google+ a Facebook killer?
My answer? Yes, at least for me. As of a few weeks ago I created a new Facebook account in which I requested as friends only a small handful of family and friends to be on my list because not only was my old account cluttered with boring posts and hardly-active people, but I had lost so much control of it that it was easier to start over than clean up the account. Once I am happy I have those I am interested on having on my list I will kill the original account and let everyone know why. Then I can spend more time on Google+ while only having to check Facebook on occasions and thanks to some Google Chrome extensions I can do that with little effort and my time on Facebook will be just to have a small sense of connection between family and friends not on Google+ yet, once they are one here too, then Facebook will have something to worry about.

What about you/. has Google+ become the cause of you Facebook account quick or slow death?

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