Sharing Is A Little Overrated

   I was reading a post in the Google+ community that got me thinking about social media again (is this going to become a blog where I talk about nothing but Google+? Mmm, not quite).
   I've already commented on Twitter. Gossip, rumors and verbal wars seems to be the only real news that comes out of that site. Way down the list of interests for me. It does seem to be a source for researching bigger stories (Manti T'eo and Deadspin anyone?).
   Facebook is still something very new to me. And with the new Graph Search everything that one has made public will be searchable within the site. I came in just after Timeline debuted and this hasn't rolled out yet. I'm not sure how this will affect me because I only have one friend on FB (hi, JayPBee! Got your poke, don't know what to do), so I guess I could search friends of my friend. It seems like a really good way for FB to get their advertising info even more targeted. What else can I do there? All of the old friends I have an interest in are either very private folk, the sort that just didn't have a computer to begin with or dead (really). So my YouTube likes, Hulu watches, Spotify listens and Washington Social Reader reads are the only posts I have so far. I'll figure out something to do there. Soon.
   I actually have two Yahoo accounts. What is that site, beyond email? Lots of news headlines (I mainly use Google News), a number of apps/sites connections and...? It's good for signing onto other sites! (So is FB!)
   The blog post I read was called "Why the Google+ long game is brilliant" (sic). He waxes forth about how he uses Hangouts and Chat and Voice and on and on. As a businessman. For which I am not using G+. I can see the potential for a number of the features, but not for me. For now.
   This whole "integration" thing that Google is striving for is kind of a head scratcher for me. I have a YouTube account because I want to Watch videos, not post them. I have a Gmail account because I wanted to get a job, not write letters to friends (see friends issue above). I have a Blogger account (not this one) because I want to write fiction, and if anyone reads it, hooray. Google News is nice because I like to keep up with current events. And Google search is great at finding things.
   And that's it. The rest is kind of bells and whistles to me. For example, I decided to "personalize" my Gmail page and add a background. I tried a number of different images from my files until I found one that I liked. That and the others are now a Picassa album! What's that about? It didn't offer to save a image for me, it simply saved, period. Even the rejects. Which I have to delete. Because I didn't want to save them in the first place (at least not on Picassa).  
   I am starting to enjoy discussing things and reading posts on G+ but I don't see Google as the be all and end all of internet life. As an individual. If I were a business (like Brad Feld, the poster), I, too, would see a "future is now" world coming our way. But, I'm not. I am not out to promote myself all over the web (if you read this far, Yeah!). Here, I just have stuff I want to say as I explore what I encounter with social media.
   I'll figure out what to do with FB. I'll figure out what Yahoo is good for besides allowing me to log in to sites. Twitter, not going there. Flickr, Tumblr, Pinterest, Yelp: dipping my toe, so to speak. Did you know that Sears new membership is also a social media/shopping network? That Disqus is a social media/commentary network? Yeah, gonna take a look at those, too. Maybe do some research about them on Google.
   In the meantime, I'll just keep my separate stuff separate while I can and fight for my small right to not have to share everything with everyone across every feature. Just some things. Like this.

Community Failure

   Got kicked out of a community today without explanation or notice. Not sure what I did wrong but it would've been polite if I had found out personally instead of by trying to respond to a comment I found in my email and discovering that I wasn't able to interact because I had been locked out. How very disappointing. I guess Google+ is not immune to less than grown-up behavior by some members. I have since muted the individuals who moderate the community because it is too late for reasons now. That would have been before not after behavior. I will just move on and find a better group to post about this topic.

Picassa's Secret Auto-Opt-In

   Um, just what is this site suppose to be? I most recently saw that it is trying to position itself as a photo site to replace Instagram after the recent announcement backfired and they had to backpedal and return to their original policy. So far, all I have experienced with Picassa is that it made an album out of my profile photos (including a separate one for profile photos-draft?), a scrapbook photos and one for this blog(!). These were formed automatically and I only discovered this site by looking at my Dashboard for Google. I guess it is for downloading your photos as sharable albums exclusive of being in posts on a web site now that they have added a mobile app. I was surprised that it made those albums without my opting in as I did not know about Picassa before the Dashboard gave me my surprise.
   This auto-opt-in ticked off a friend of mine who was posting photos and text separately on Google+ and found that his photo posts had been removed to albums only. He was very upset and deleted all material from his page: posts, photos, profile info, etc. I had to tell him about Picassa because his photos and album were still there. So he also deleted the info from his Picassa file and made both files private and blocked from anyone but himself. But since he has no plans to use them any more, they are basically dead pages. That was when he discovered that his Blogger page had an album created for it as well (I told him about how my empty album auto-formed; I guess it is to store photos that get posted on my blog; like that will happen). That also set him off, as his blog is something he deliberately chose to not connect to his G+ account (because it is NSFW). He said that the only reason he didn't close his whole Google account was because he uses it to sign in to a number of his other non-Google sites. He really hates this auto-opt-in stuff that Google is doing. 
   As for myself, I don't have a good camera phone, so I am not downloading photos. That kind of makes this a site for which I really have no use right now. Not in some bad way, but without good tools, it's just going to store duplicates of my very occasional photo posts on G+.
   (Sorry to get a little off topic, but I promised to air his complaint).