Google announced today that it is sunsetting Google+. I thought Google+ had great potential as a social media alternative to Facebook, but it never seemed to gain traction. The feature I thought was most valuable was the opportunity to define circles of individuals as a way to control who would be able to see specific content you created. It made sense to me that it made sense to share different content with friends, family, or the general public. I recently learned that this idea was not originally Google’s but was based on the open source Diaspora project and what this venture described as aspects.
Google used privacy concerns related to breaches as justification, but it was clear that the service was simply not generating much activity.
Looking back at Google+