When Google+ was released everybody, including myself, was excited to get an invite to see what it was.
When we did get our invite, we quickly signed up and uploaded a picture and uttered a resounding “Now what?”
Google+ is Facebook but more “google-y.” It’s got a plain white background and a simplistic design, but in the end it’s just another social network for people to share pictures of themselves drinking with their friends and post statuses about how bored they are at work.
Sure, they had the “circles” feature where you could select which friends got to see certain pictures and comments, but a similar thing was almost immediately implemented into Facebook with a new update. Google+ didn’t take off because it was unnecessary. People had already found their social network.
They liked it. It worked.
Why would people want to update and maintain two social networks when all their friends were already on one?
Recently, in an attempt to make Facebook more profitable, the company began selling stock.
So far, it has been a failure. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the stock is worth about $5 a share and predicted to continue to drop.
In order to fix this problem, Facebook has started implementing ads directly in people’s newsfeeds, sometimes disguised as actual posts.
Things like “John Smith likes Walmart!” will show up on your page even though that particular friend liked the Walmart page – for God knows what reason – over two months ago.
They’re trying to trick us into clicking ads now that we’ve learned not to click on the ones on the side of the page.
Constant updates, features, ads and clutter are the same reasons we all jumped ship from Myspace years ago, and I see that problem on the horizon for Facebook too.
Google+ is new and clean and ad-free. They still want you to join and use their software. That’s the difference. Facebook doesn’t really need us anymore because they think they already have us for life.
Is this how we have to live our lives now? Switching our information from website to website like some kind of obsessive compulsive online hermit crab?
We join a website until it becomes cluttered and bloated by its own crap and then switch to the next thing?
Or is everybody destined to sign up for everything and juggle between them until there’s no time left in the day?
I, for one, have had enough of this.
When Facebook crashes and burns, I won’t be switching to Google+ or Pinterest or whatever the new fad is.
Instead, I’m just going to delete my profile and go outside.
That’s a lie.
I’ll be there with everybody else, and I will be angrily tweeting and texting and posting and Redditing about it until suddenly, I’m an old man and my whole life has passed me by.
Matt Grippi is a senior journalism student and the diversions editor for the Daily 49er.
