Is it the end for Google+?

I just heard this news on Google+. It seems they had a data leak earlier this year, but didn't make it public. Wall Street Journal broke the news, but that's behind a paywall. Other sites such as the BBC are also reporting it.

I've used lots of social sites over the last couple of decades. Many of those no longer exist (identica, Multiply, Orkut, Tsu to name a few). In most cases all the content disappeared from the web, but I do have dumps of a couple of these in case I find a way to use them.

I joined Google+ soon after it started. I liked the clean interface and lack of ads. It is still ad-free and that may be part of the issue. It's never really been a revenue earner for them and it never took off like some other sites even though everyone who logged into Gmail or other Google services had an account.

I liked the way you could group accounts you follow into 'circles' and later they added 'collections' so you could categorise your posts. I've followed lots of cool people there and many kept using it. Unfortunately the world decided that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were better places to be.

This recent breach may have been the final nail in the coffin. Apparently they are rebranding it for enterprise use, whatever that means. I'll miss it and I may lose track of some people I followed there.

In theory our Steemit posts will live on as long as there's a witness to process them and an app or site to access them or we can just download the whole blockchain. Images and other media may not be as safe depending on where it's stored.

Just keep Steeming on.

I'm Steve, the geeky guitarist.

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