As a fifty something dude (can I still be called a dude?), I enjoy more than my fair share of Social Media...So a coupla friends have now "invited" me to Google+. I've not yet accepted their thoughtful invitations. Can anyone explain to me the advantages? I mean I have Facebook and Twitter and this here Blogger blog.
I do see the value of setting up Google+ "Circles" to disseminate info, thoughts, clips, links, photos etc to like minded folks through email... BUT, those particular friends of mine are stubbornly addicted to their AOL, optonline, Roadrunner, Hotmail, Lycos, Yahoo or Compuserve accounts and have refused my persuasiveness to get a Gmail account in the first place, let alone Google+. (Anyone know if I can put these folks into a Google+ circle with their non-Gmail addys??)
I know I'll never be one for Google+ "Video Hangouts" or "Huddles" tied into my Android phone... I can't even bear old fashioned "Instant Messaging" and have defaults set to "Invisible" on ALL my social media...
And I participate in quite a few social media experiences... Pretty good for someone in the 50+ demographic.
Seriously... Somebody, besides David Pogue who raved about it, in this NYTimes review tell me *why* I should sign up and learn the new Google+ platform?
Grateful to learn this morning, however, that Google Labs shutdown won't mean I'll lose the Gmail features that I love... Yesterday's tweets were looking quite ominous about Google labs announcement of Lab closing...
Speaking of tweets... As usual, I have been short tweeting MUCH more than I have been long blogging and the newly re-decorated my Twitter Profile actually reveals more of my summer vacation doings... Interesting, that while I was able to redo my Twitter profile page layout yesterday, Twitter wouldn't let me update my icon... Silly.
My main beef with Twitter, however, is that they disappear the user's posts. Perhaps, I'd like to search back among my 12,177 tweets to see what I did on this particularly summer day in history on each of the last few previous years? Greedily, they don't make those tweets available. Poof! They're gone! That sucks! (Does a solution exist that I am unaware of?)
I really like Facebook. I do...But, it IS a lot of work to carefully set it up so that you are in control of all your personal information. Newbies make the mistake of signing up for embarrassing apps that compromise their personal address books, send stupid updates to all their Facebook friends, and so often they post something that winds up being public that that they thought was private... And the list goes on and on...
Facebook is NOT low maintenance... And it DOES require a learning curve...
That being said... I've mastered it over the years, doing a couple settings posts, tweaks (like turning off Instant Messaging) and FAQ's at a time... And I love it...
But I need to just let go that some of my friends, family, and colleagues of all ages are never gonna be up for the challenge of learning a new platform, no matter how intuitive that it may be...
It's too bad, because their fear, is keeping them from participating in one big party...
Ah well... One of the life skills that comes a bit easier after 50: "Live and let live"...
