The blog is dead. Long live the blog!
I was prompted by an article written by Mike Elgan about how famed podcaster and internet host Leo Laporte was dropping social media all together. No Facebook, no Twitter, not even an Instagram. Leo retreated to the safety and security of his own blogs. A world totally under his control.
That got me thinking about my terribly limited use of social media (i.e Google+) and why I even bother using it. My engagement on the once flourishing Google+ had all but dried up. I really only communicate regularly with three or four people on the platform these days.
All of this lead me to examine the reasons I still bother to post anything to Google+ and the answers were pretty simple.
The primary use? To share photos of our travels and grandpuppy with our family.
The others? To read the news and to share and converse about things that I like and that matter to me.
Then came the announcement that Google had decided to shut down the consumer facing version of Google+ and move it to a corporate only solution.
So that pretty much answered my question. What to do about Google+ and social media? Stop using it (kind of) and find other methods of accomplishing these goals.
For news I have taken some time to find most all of my favorite news sources and have added them to Google News. I've also started reading more news through Google News so that its recommendation system will get better at presenting me with the types of articles I prefer to read. Seems to be working reasonably well so far.
As for sharing and conversing about things I enjoy... I have basically given up on any social interactions but will occasionally share those type of things to this blog, Batcaveweb.com. Comments are enabled for those with a Google account so feel free to interact if you so desire but I assume that most will not bother. The act of doing any more than clicking a link is too much effort in this world of social media instant gratification.
The sharing of travels and grandpuppies with the family will take a very similar approach with one extra venue tossed into the mix.
We have created a new blog, UnRuheLee.com, where we will share long form posts about travel, food, and our animals. In addition, as blogs are not great for sharing quick photos publicly, we have also created Instagram accounts. Yeah, I know. Failbook owns it. I'm sure it will soon be ruined but for now it is one of the easiest and fastest ways to share photos with comments and location tags publicly as well as allowing for comments. As the photos can be shared publicly family members can view them without the need to create an account. Life is simpler for everyone.
If Instagram becomes too terrible much of this sharing can be accomplished via Google Photos. It just lacks an easy way to share context with a photo but it could work with a little training.
In the meantime the blog posts will automatically share to Google+ from both blogs. Also sharing the photos over from Instagram isn't too difficult. That also comes with the added bonus of Google+ not completely wrecking and pixelating every single photo I try to upload from my phone these days.
That being said, I don't know how much, if any, content I will post directly to Google+. All of the usual stuff will end up there just from other sources. So I'm still here. :)
If you want to keep up in the future after Google+ finally folds you can follow along here:
https://www.instagram.com/jasonandrewlee/
https://batcaveweb.com/
https://unruhelee.com/
See ya around the internet. ;)
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