This is not breaking news by any means. I believe Google announced back in December that Google+, their attempt at taking on Facebook, had failed and was shutting down. Unlike other forgotten platforms of yesteryear such as myspace, Google was not going to even pretend that it was still successful. They, like most of us, wanted to just forget that it ever existed, delete everything, and move on. So as of this month, everything is gone for good and the platform is just a memory.
I know what you’re thinking, “I never used it so why should I care?”. Well here is my public service announcement about why it might be important to you.
If you were like me, you thought “it’s Google”, I better at least give Google+ a try because it might help my search ranking and SEO. Now I’m not sure if that was absolutely true but I don’t think I was the only one with this thought. I know a lot of web developers and digital marketers who, when it first came out, recommended setting up an account and linking to it from your website. We all thought it was important.
My first mistake was linking to a social media platform that I wasn’t using. I know I shouldn’t do that, but again it was google, which somehow felt different from pretending I use snapchat (which I don’t).
But now that it’s gone, we can all forget this ever happened. However, in order to do that make sure you delete those links from your website to your (now non existent) Google+ account. Someone else might have set it up for the exact same reason that I did, because it was supposed to be this big important social media platform that would give Facebook a run for their money. But it wasn’t and it didn’t. So go and double check your website to make sure you don’t have a link to Google+. That is my PSA for today. The irony here is that Google definitely does not like broken links on your website, even if those links are to their own failed social media platform.
So goodbye Google+, we won’t miss you because we didn’t even realize that you were gone, but you are at peace now… with Blockbuster. Farewell.
