Social Media

I have no idea what the future holds for Twitter. I do know however that the recent changes at Twitter by Elon Musk continues to bleed cash, staff, and community. A lot of people are currently seeking social media networks that aren't Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. I've been there myself. In the past, I've always reached the same conclusion that I have too many friends, family, and acquaintances I value still remain on the Big 3 as I don't want to leave them behind. Until now. Increasingly, I'm starting to soften my stance from I'm not leaving Twitter to starting to tweet out loud that I may be leaving Twitter.

BuddyPress 10.0.0 "La Pino'z" is the first major release of 2022 for the WordPress plugin. BuddyPress is a plugin to build online communities and includes features such as user profiles, groups, activity streams, notifications and can be integrated with the WordPress plugin bbPress to enhance community forums.

Highlights of new features and significant changes in BuddyPress include:

A week ago Twitter offered to upgrade my Twitter account (@socpub) to a new design for its Web Interface. For the most part, I've been viewing the revamped interface via the Chrome browser through a Windows 10 PC. After intense use of the new interface this past weekend, I have to say so far so good. In fact, I have no real complaints about the changes Twitter has made...which is highly unusual for me when it comes to social media.

I've been using MeWe for a few weeks now and while I haven't decided if I'm there to stay, there are a number of things I'm impressed with this "next-gen social network". Despite MeWe's cluttered user interface via a web browser, the actual layout of the post itself is well done.

I just deleted my Google+ Profile. This is what I posted on my Google Plus account before I deleted the account.

I’m pulling a Google and shutting down my Google+ profile much sooner than expected…like this evening.

After a round a spammers hit my comments and seeing the “where do you go from here” conversations get personal…it’s just not healthy for me to stick around here any longer. Please come by and visit me on my blog and at Twitter. I’m also experimenting with MeWe, PlusPora, YouMe, and Minds. Wherever you decide to go after Google+…may you have a happy life!

Alternatives for following me:

Definite Replacements:
My Blog: https://bryanruby.com/

Today, I submitted my last Google+ post. From here on out, I won't be actively monitoring the platform given the expected demise of Google+. This is what I posted:

This is likely my last Google+ post but I don't plan to delete my Google+ account until February 28, 2019

Unless something significant happens, I don't plan to post again on Google+. It doesn't seem logical to invest my time and effort to post something we all know will be deleted in a couple months. I may leave a comment here or there on G+ but that's about it.

After nearly eight years of being a Google+ user, the time to say goodbye to the social network is almost here. For those of you that never saw the value of Google+, I  don't expect you to fully understand what hardcore users (I'm one of them) will be missing when the platform is no more. I think Mike Elgan's article probably describes Google+ best when he explains it as a place "where smart people gather for long, detailed and interesting conversations" without the streams being "algorithmically filtered" like most social networks.

Two years ago, I made an attempt to distance myself from CMS Report. The ability to shutdown ten years of work proved more difficult than I thought so I eventually compromised by rebranding the site to socPub. Since then, I've been working on a number of additional side projects. I'm still trying to throw new ideas against the wall and see which ones stick. 

For those curious, these are the personal projects I'm working on for 2018:

NBC News recently posted an interesting article where the author notes that the spam industry follows the same Law of Supply and Demand as any capitalist-loving business does. As social networks crack down on fake accounts and fake news, the spam industry is able to charge their customers more to establish such inauthentic accounts.

Facebook shut down as many as 30,000 fake accounts in the past week — but that's unlikely to hurt the multi-million-dollar spam industry.