After all these year, Google is finally shutting down it's social media platform, Google+.
In official jargon, Google is sunsetting the platform after a major security flaw potentially exposed 500,000 personal profiles. In English, it's getting scrapped.
It was always a late contender to the social media party, which was dominated by Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn. But because it was a Google product, you felt like you had to make an effort in case it affected you search rankings in some shape or form. There were years of confusion as Google moved Google maps listings, and shoved them in to the Google plus zone, causing duplicates, missing reviews and lots of frustrated page owners.
It seemed to become popular with more technical groups, but even those in recent years seemed to be quieter than they were. I tend to update our pages sporadically, concentrating instead on the new posts features in your Google My Business entry (see below image).
Google says it will be winding down the network over the next 10 months before switching it off.
So you have time to collect any worthwhile content, shove it on your own site instead of Googles, and start removing those G+ like and sharing buttons and links you might have on your website.
Here is the official Google news release from yesterday: Project Strobe: Protecting your data
So did you use G+ or will you lament it's demise?
