Farewell Google Plus…

Google Plus is one of those social media platforms which had its time and has, rather quickly, died away. By current standards, millennials are more frequently turning to newer platforms such as Twitter and Snapchat. It mirrors Facebook in a few aspects such as the opportunity for joining groups related to different interests or audiences.

Launched in 2011, Google+ has more recently been viewed by some as a boring, fruitless pastime (more so than other social media) and by others as a personal security threat. Between 2015 and March of last year, developers had the capability to view and potentially steal private profile information from the platform’s users. Despite this, Google stated they did not discover any signs that the infiltrating bug had actually been used to steal or misrepresent any Google+ profile data.

Nevertheless, Google remains one of the leading search engine companies in the world, hosting some 2.2 billion users. And even among their users, Google+ seems to be floundering — with a mere 9% of the several billion users posting content to the social media platform. It is currently a feature that’s something less than popular.

A few days ago, Youtube sent an update to its users informing all the video makers that “the ability to automatically post YouTube activity (uploads, liked videos, etc.) on Twitter and Google+ will no longer be available” as of January 31st. Youtube claimed their reason for enacting this alteration to the automated sharing method was because personalized messages simply give “a better experience for the sharer and their followers…”

Late in 2018, we were informed that Google+ was going to be shut down. Google+’s associated API’s (application programming interfaces) shall go down with it, some possibly as soon as January 28th. All of the social media platform’s API’s will be down by March 7th. Then Google Plus itself will be fully removed in April 2019.

If you are a Google+ user and want to learn more on how you can save some of your Google+ data prior to its removal, read this article from 9to5Google.