RICK REA: Helping You Grow Through Online Marketing
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Social Media News
    • SEO Marketing News
    • Digital Trends News
    • Photography News
    • Mobile Marketing
    • Business News
    • Gadget News
    • Printing News
  • Contact
  • About
  • Subscribe


I joined Google to escape Facebook. It didn't work.

2/1/2019

0 Comments

 
http://bit.ly/2DOiLSe

I joined Google+ to escape Facebook. It didn't work.

http://bit.ly/2UCGZob

After my college boyfriend and I broke up in the winter of 2011 (my senior year in college), I began to suspect he had a new flame, in large part because of the photos that started to appear on Facebook. 

"That was taken from the perspective of his bed," I remember thinking about one. "What would *she* be doing on his bed?"

These investigations caused occasional bouts of anger, or acceptance, or acting out on my side of the net. As others have chronicled before me, social media makes letting go of a relationship even harder.

By the summer of 2011, I had graduated college and moved to New York to work at a music venue. I was angsty, but happy and meeting new people, staying out late, behaving questionably. Then, during a quick stop to my windowless Brooklyn bedroom in between parties on a brutally hot 4th of July, a skim of Facebook on my laptop made me snap. 

My ex-boyfriend was officially "In A Relationship."

Without tears, without even thinking much, really, I took a plunge I'd been contemplating for a while. I deactivated my Facebook account then and there. Then, I slammed my laptop shut, swapped one crop top for another (hell ya), and headed out to a rooftop party to watch the fireworks.

I may have gone Facebook delinquent, but I wasn't about to commit total social media suicide. I still had  the hottest new platform of the moment in my arsenal: Google+.

I remember thinking, when I joined Google+ in late June 2011 just after its launch, oh, maybe this way I can quit Facebook! The ex-boyfriend updates and I think just the whole scene of performative life that was Facebook in 2011 — especially during the immediately post-college time of life, full of stress about who you are and what you are doing with your life — was getting a bit much for me. I was looking for a way out. 

Plus, you needed an INVITATION to join Google+. You could create circles — how exclusive. My mom hadn't heard of it. My friends were writing about it in their internships. And I could help lead the migration; at that time of my life, I was actually a semi-professional party planner. Google+ could be the digital iteration of that.

The party's here, I swear!

The party's here, I swear!

Image: screenshot: rachel kraus/mashable

Back then, I didn't know how short lived Google+ would be. It was a failure almost from the start. And in December 2018, Google announced that its last day of online existence would be in April 2019. A grand experiment, failed.

But in 2011, the buzz and the apparently exploding user base made Google+ feel like it had actual potential. So I led the charge of bringing my recent grad friends over. I was *active* on the platform. I invited friends and created circles and even commented publicly for a CNN article about why I was turning to Google+ over Facebook.

There was just one problem: nobody showed up to my digital party.

The biggest problem with Google+ even then was endemic, and ironic. Nobody used Google+ because not enough people used it. Even in 2011, Facebook was already too big to fail, and too big to compete with as a mirror alternative. It would take a fundamentally different value proposition — like Instagram's aesthetic-first photo stream, and Snapchat's disappearing images — to actually create a new world. 

Google+ just didn't have anything new. So, if you're not escaping the social media updates of an ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend, why move? 

I must have suspected this even then. When I left Facebook, I chose to deactivate — not delete — my account, essentially keeping Facebook on the back-burner. A digital playmate I could go back to any time.

Today, it's tempting to say that Facebook's star is falling. You'd be forgiven for drawing that conclusion from recent headlines about droppingstock prices and user attrition. However, Facebook has a similar invincibility today, but it's just disguised. Because Facebook has acquired Instagram and WhatsApp, buying or stealing the innovations of its competitors, it's hard to truly leave it, even if we try. 

And, despite a year of scandals, Facebook ended 2018 with record profitability.

After quitting Facebook that day, I went to a new party where I ended up dumping the contents of a bottle of ketchup on a boy's baby blue polo shirt as retribution for insulting me; a Facebook-less life was not a drama-free one. I refused to pay for his dry cleaning.

Quitting Facebook did not enable me to leave my social network behind, taking a select few friends with me to the (empty) greener pastures of Google+. It did not, obviously, catch on. I ended up reactivating Facebook 6 months later. My friends went back and tagged me in all the photos I'd missed, where they'd simply tagged a stand-in name, instead: The Ghost of Rachel's Facebook.

Like a new fling, for a few months I put my hope in Google+. But it turns out that a social network with neither the social nor the network is no fun. 

But I'll remember the good times, Google+. We got to be two petty hot messes, together, young and new to the world, filled with the youthfully egotistical belief that the universe would be as we made it. 

It may have been brief, mon ami. But at least we tried.





Social Media

via Mashable http://bit.ly/2DCFv97

February 1, 2019 at 03:29PM

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    Amazing WeightLoss

    Click Here!

    Categories

    All
    Analyze Top Competitors
    Anti-Abuse
    Apple
    Apple Watch
    Blog Posts
    Brainstorm
    Brand Awareness
    Communications
    Content Marketing
    Conversion Rates
    Editorial Calendar Tips
    Engagement
    Facebook
    Google Analytics
    How To Marketing Tips
    Influencer
    Instagram
    Instagram Live
    Keyword Search
    Marketing
    Marketing Automation
    Picture Quotes
    Podcasts
    Recording Videos
    Repurpose Blogs
    Research Trends
    Sales Funnel
    SEO Marketing
    Sharing Posts
    Slide Shows
    Smartwatch
    Social Media Marketing
    Social Media News
    Social Media Tools
    Social Selling
    Target Marketing
    Twitter
    Twitter Notifications
    User Interaction
    Video
    Video Marketing

    Archives

    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017

    RSS Feed

All content copyrighted (C) 2010 ~ 2020
​All Photos & Content Used Under Creative Commons
​www.RickRea.com 701-200-7831
Privacy Policy
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Social Media News
    • SEO Marketing News
    • Digital Trends News
    • Photography News
    • Mobile Marketing
    • Business News
    • Gadget News
    • Printing News
  • Contact
  • About
  • Subscribe