Tuesday, October 11. 2011Google Plus and Blogging If you have ever wondered why some KDE folks are blogging less frequently now, the reason could be that they have switched to G+. Many FOSS and KDE people are now posting regularly on G+, among them Thiago, Linus Torvalds, Rob Malda of Slashdot fame, Glyn Moody, Trever Fischer, Harald Sitter, and myself. What makes Google+ so attractive? Basically it combines a social network, quick status updates like Twitter, and blogging, and it's far quicker to do than traditional blogging. As opposed to Facebook, which I am no longer using, its UI is very minimalist, and the "Circles" feature makes it easy to select your target audience. Most of my contacts on G+ are FOSS people and work mates, and I rarely get "Friendship" (what does this mean anyway?) requests from people that I don't know. You might like or dislike this trend, but it's a fact. Many of my posts on G+ are technology related, but not all of them. Most of the time, my posts are "public", so you can read them without having an account. This is my feed on Google+ (if you check my contacts, you will find many KDE people): https://plus.google.com/u/0/102602725322221030250 Is this trend worrying, a good thing, or simply a new technology that we must accept? Update: This is an interesting (public) article on the benefits of blogging on G+: https://plus.google.com/112546833633391090642/posts/1fkCLdAFGuT Trackbacks
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Definitely Worrying. Google is too big already, there's no need to feed it with more (and especially not private) data.
A matter of preference, but I prefer to hold my data on my own server, rather than lending it to $OUTSIDE_ORGANIZATION.
THat, and I don't like "social" networks that much.
At any rate, maybe I should mention that I personally love Google+. It's awesome on so many levels.
Adding to that, the video chat feature (called "Hangout") works extremely well. The echo cancellation is so good that you can speak fine without a headset, just with a microphone, and your speakers at normal volume. It even works fine with 5 persons at the same time.
Nah, this is bollocks. I went through Markey's friend list, 99% of the KDE people there are already in my G+ circles, and I can tell you, they aren't posting there either. Maybe they all got hired and discovered weekend shopping at Ikea instead of hacking. Markey, decrease your meta level and do something useful instead
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It's not bollocks at all. E.g Thiago is posting a lot on G+. When have you last seen him blogging?
Yesterday? (sadly I was not allowed to post a link to the blog, so you will have to check macieira dot org by yourself)
If one do not his/her rss on http://planetkde.org he/she won't reach the wide audience, I am afraid.
BTW, this is not trend, just perception of one user. Users of other web sites have different perception
 There's effect of NEW, as in fashion industry. As you said, you might like or dislike this.
Haha, you say that to follow FOSS development I have to use a proprietary service... It has been worrying with blogger.com and gmail account of FOSS people in the past already, but why the hack don't you use diaspora? It is not that there is no free alternative...
Quite simple: Who is using Diaspora? 3 FOSS nerds, and what army?
I like to have an audience when writing something. Sure, I'd love to use Diaspora, but realistically it's not an alternative, at this point.
And who used KDE when I started? I use it because it is free software, not because it has a large audience. If you get compromised that quickly, then why not target Windows applications for the broad audience?
Instead of supporting freedom, by joining Diaspora and double posting on G+ you dismiss it as being used by 3 nerds. I am happy you are not there yet. The threesome is awesome 
Actually we are targeting Windows now. The Amarok port to Windows is progressing nicely
So what you're saying is that you're betraying FOSS (like Wordpress) in favor of proprietary crap. Great attitude....
Why don't you just switch to Windows and use Media Player and drop Amarok? At least you'd lose the bigotry.
I don't feel that this is betrayal at all. Personally I have a more practical approach to FOSS, similar to Linus Torvalds.
E.g. I'm completely fine with using Closed Source tools (like Photoshop) for producing Open Source. It's the result that counts.
I just wonder, why are bloggers, especially those who make their living from publishing their words online are so keen on submitting their entire content to social sites? Surely linking from the social network should be enough, shouldn't you maintain the content on your own platform? How is placing your posts there quicker? because you don't have to then go and link your posts in G+?
Like with the Huffington Post, and several others, I keep being amazed how willing people are to hand over their words to anyone, for no gain whatsoever. I always thought that the last place people who are interested in KDE and Amarok should go to search for information is G+, or, another odd example, Quora. Keep in mind, I'm referring to using G+ as your "main stage". If someone has a main channel (like a podcast, a column, etc.) and uses a social network for socialising, great. If someone use it as his blogging platform, then something went wrong in the process. It doesn't matter whether it's open, closed, free or proprietary, I just don't get it.
I can only speak for myself: I'm leading a bit of what I call an "Open Source Life".
There are only few aspects of me that are not publicly known. I often post about my work, my private life, and even certain mental issues that I suffer from. I chose to be a public figure, and this is the price I pay. I'm willing to pay it.
Thanks for the heads up. Can't you (non-specific you) get an RSS feed for these and add them to Planet somehow? That would be nice. Otherwise I'll probably add them to Google Reader manually, if there's not too much noise that comes along with it... (if there is I'll resign myself to checking them every few months when it occurs to me).
(And no, I don't feel like getting a G+ account. Not until/unless everyone else moves over, anyways.)
Not sure if this is possible. Maybe worth looking into, especially because I could post into something like a "KDE Public" Circle, which would function a bit like a tag.
Now that you mention RSS. G+ doesn't (didn't the last time I used it) have any RSS feeds.
The one volunteer who had made it possible to create feeds of your public posts had to close his service down after Google suddenly raised the prices for Google apps so that it ended up costing him an absurd amount of money. And people with no G+ accounts cannot comment on the posts.
http://adrianshort.co.uk/2011/09/25/its-the-end-of-the-web-as-we-know-it/
I believe you'll find this article interesting. What if we start to get more and more dependent to closed standards? Google has been relatively good(tm) until now but it's not enough
> Is this trend worrying, a good thing, or simply a new technology that we must accept?
it's simply a new technology that we must INTEGRATE, planets need to dig also the posts on g+ if they are relevant (decided by the blogger)
If Microsoft paid for summer of code each year, would we be as happy to hand over all of our content and interactions to them?
When I visit your G+ site, G+ says that my browser configuration is not supported and it invites me "to switch to a modern browser". Great idea to move to a service that claims that your software (KDE's Konqueror) is not a modern browser! I wonder where are the good old days in which free software adepts still loved freedom. We have been fighting for two decades for the freedom to use whichever software we want, to spread it as much as we want, to modify it as much as we want and to spread our modifications as much as we want (remember the 4 freedoms? yeah, I know it is a long time ago). Now we should be fighting for our freedom to use whatever social networking service we want (and not be slaves of FB, T or G+), for the possibility to decide ourselves what happens with our data, for the possibility of removing all information collected about us, ... Essentially this is the same fight as before, namely the fight for our FREEDOM!!! I want to die not being a slave of MS Word, I want to die not being a slave of FB, I want to die FREE! What is the use of using free software if it only serves to turn me into a slave of FB and G+?
I lot of FLOSS and other free spirited people have left G+ because of the #nymwars and and Eric Schmidts statement that it is not so much of a social network but rather an identification service. Do a Google (or DuckDuckGo) search for that.
Many of them (including myself) have decided that enough is enough and are now getting untangled from the Google web all together and are finding alternatives to the services they will no longer use [*]. Many of them have now either joined Diaspora* or revived their accounts. http://nyms.wikispaces.com/Google+Alternatives
Same here - we tried it out but there didn't seem to be much point given that we already use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
One thing I was very surprised about was how much personal information Google already had when I logged in for the first time! |
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