The little social network that couldn’t

Time to check in on our old friend, Google Plus.

It’s like the lame punchline to a joke that’s 6 years old.

I’m “active” on Google+ in a couple of ways:

1. My blogs are set to auto-post links to new posts through my personal Google+ account.
2. I manage a Birmingham-focused Google+ Community which just turned 5. It requires little more than admitting new members, taking down spam and posting a few posts per week. All told, maybe 10 minutes total needed every week.

That’s it. I’m probably putting too much effort into it as is. At best, Google Plus is driving 1 percent to 2 percent of traffic when looking at all social referrals to my sites.

Even a casual Google search doesn’t turn up any results for Plus posts on the first page. Weak.

The Web interface is terrible. I gave up on the iOS app a long time ago.

So no interactive value with real people. No more SEO juice. A lousy user experience. What’s left to do?

Not much. I’ll leave my outposts in place, though the value diminishes daily. It shows how difficult it is to launch the Next Big Thing when it comes to social media. Mighty Google has struck out. At least twice.

Time to up my Ello game …

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Notes on Google’s last big Plus update in January

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Read more about social media.

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