Originally shared by Aaron Wood

Originally shared by Aaron Wood

Someone asked me tonight why the G+ dream is almost dead for me.

This was my response (with a lot embellishment added here):

(warning tl;dr ahead)

Getting added to the SUL showed me that you can have 200,000+ followers and barely get a tiny % of that number interacting on content. It's very disheartening. Looking through the list of people who have added me to their circles is a giant mess of blue heads. No profile picture. Nothing on their profile at all, really. These are the "G+ ghosts." Instead of a ghost town though, it's turned into a ghost city.

Is it my content? I try to post as much original content as I can. Whether it's my artwork, photos, attempts at comedy. I learned long ago that some people can put on the "cruise control" and get more "engagement" (I still hate that word) by posting old content, motivational sayings (that they didn't come up with,) funny cat gifs, etc etc than I can with something that took me a while to create. I didn't want to go that route and ride the coattails of someone else's creativity. I can't control who likes, or shares or even comments on my posts. Some people have found that magic formula. Myself, I've struck gold here and there, but that mystical "mother lode" and "sweet spot" is still lurking just outside my reach.

By now, cliques have been formed, celebrities firmly established, a clear guide to what people should like (anything Google or Android) and what they shouldn't (anything not Google or Android.) Yes, this is a place developed by Google. It's a magical land of Android and Google Glasses and self-driving cars (that may or may not have hit a donkey,) but the animosity towards anyone that uses other products is overwhelming. 

I also feel that Google doesn't know what the hell they're doing with this. UI changes (3 major ones to the mobile version since it came out, at least 2 different versions of the desktop) different toys to play with (ripples, pages, more hats in hangouts (which I admit, are cool,) and then recently the addition of communities. It's like they have a dart board and they're throwing a dart at it and picking something new to roll out every couple of months. People get jazzed about the newness of something and then a few months later, it's lost the luster. #whitespace  anyone? That's been here for almost a year.

Communities has made everything fragmented and the feeling of an actual "Community" on G+ is gone. A lot of people are posting only to communities and I'm missing a lot of the content they used to share with me as their follower. I hate having to think I'd have to join some community and then another sub community, possibly, to see content that used to be shared openly with me. You also can't see what communities people have joined (oh imagine the fun THAT would be!) so tracking down where people are spending all their time now a chore.

As it happens on any forum I've been on since I've been online, things change. People come and go. Attrition, real life happens, boredom. I think G+ is getting to that point for me. At first it was like lightning in a bottle. I managed (somehow) to catch it. I actually channeled the negative energy from this place (the hatred of Facebook and Twitter) and turned it into art that's gotten me a fair amount of recognition here. Sadly, the place where I got my start, is no longer feeling like a welcome place. The negative energy hasn't lessened at all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to G+ for giving me a place to show my art and meet people. It's a free service and they don't owe me a thing. I'm also grateful to my core group of friends and fans that usually manage to chime in on my posts.

Not quite sure what lies ahead for me on G+. I know everyone's here for different reasons and some are happy and others are growing jaded like myself. Will I still be here when my two year anniversary rolls around? No clue.

I guess I'll just continue to do what I do and "keep calm and carry on."

Or whatever.

/rant over