I found out something amazing when I quit Facebook..

The Mightywomble
Sep 9, 2018 · 3 min read

If you were expecting a deep philosophical writeup on about how disassociating myself from Zuckerberg and his empire helped me find some sort of inner peace and social well-being this isn’t that post.

When I removed myself from Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp what I did find was I lost a connection to my family who quite rightly have chosen their platform as Facebook and don’t truly understand why I left and what they are part of. To be brutally honest why should my 87 year old grandfather need to know his data is being mined and used. Facebook is to them a service and that’s what it should be.

However that’s a post for a different time, what I did find is how little the tech press really know..

You see I’m still a social media addict, I still needed my information fix, coming off Facebook and my first job was to try and find such a fix, such a community.

Having done some googling, tried a few stalwarts such as Twitter and new media darlings such as Vero I stumbled back into something the tech press would have you think is dead, Google+.

Now sure Google+ doesn’t have a billion subscribers, your family may not be on it or have ever heard of it, it is however far from a dead platform.

What it is, is at best niche, at worst targeted.

Finding active communities based on things you are interested in takes a little time and patience, however there are some very active communities on the service if your niche is the right thing.

I my case being technology and photography focussed it appears i’m actually serviced with an abundance of communities covering these areas.

What’s interesting and refreshing is unlike the Twiterverse where offending or being offended seems to be how society now deems what what we can, can’t and shouldn’t talks about for fear of offending the trolls or having a grown up conversation, Google+ seems to be a platform for grown ups.

The conversations i’ve had on groups like OnePlus, Technology and Android are all grown up, articulated and if people disagree, much like real life they don’t get offended, they ask more questions to see if they can get a better understanding of the persons point of view.

Does this happen all the time? no. It does however happen more often than not.

So it seems that while there will never be a chance of bringing the family over to this new community, the death bells being tolled by the tech press are i’d suggest a bit early, and while its evident that Google could be doing so much more with this platform to not replace Facebook, if only just to offer a real world alternative as people drop slowly off the matrix.. while Google may never get billions of users on its platform, if it can grow and nurture the platform as a place not for Twitter Trolls, more for grown up micro community conversations it could start the next wave of social media where we don’t want to be connected to the rest of the world, just communities of interest to us..

Amazing isn’t it.. there are alternatives to Facebook.. :-)

The Mightywomble

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thoughts about the world I'm surrounded by, tech, politics, opinion..