Category Archives: Social Media

Google, Social Media, Things that are bad

Latest Google rug-pull: Google+

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Google will terminate Google+ for individuals in the near future. The service will continue to exist for organizations, which presumably includes what Google calls ‘brand accounts’. But for anyone who bought into Google’s hype about the social media service, this is a major disappointment.

Just ask Mike Elgan, one of the more prolific Google+ contributors. In two recent posts, Mike expresses his profound disappointment with Google’s tendency to create new services, coerce people into using them, and then kill those services. I know all about this, having been a victim of Google’s rug-pulling shenanigans myself.

The rationale for Google’s decision to kill Google+ is the discovery of a huge hole in one of its programming interfaces (APIs). Apparently any developer using this API had access to Google+ user data beyond what was supposedly allowed. Lucky for Google+ users, hardly anyone was using this API, just as hardly anyone was using Google+. Anyway, Google fixed the hole back in March but didn’t tell anyone about it.

Okay, Google. This one doesn’t hurt me very much, as my use of Google+ is limited to parroting posts from my blogs to associated brand accounts. I’ll keep the brand accounts around, but I won’t be expanding my use of them. Fool me once… actually, I’ve lost track of how many times this has happened.

Email, Social Media, Things that are bad, Tools

The perils of using free services

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RIP TweetDeck

Twitter is pulling the plug on the Windows version of its popular TweetDeck application, pushing users to switch to the web-based version. Although they claim otherwise, the reason is simple: web applications are easier to monetize.

Twitter purchased TweetDeck in 2011 because users found its interface much more useful than the Twitter web interface, and were switching in large numbers. This translated into a loss of advertising revenue for Twitter. There were immediate predictions that Twitter would kill off TweetDeck, and that’s finally happening.

For some users, switching to the web-based TweetDeck will not be a problem. The two interfaces are virtually identical. But having a compact, separate application has several advantages: I can configure it to start automatically with my computer; I can leave it running all the time without hurting my computer’s performance; and it’s not – like all web-based apps – inherently fragile. So I’m looking at alternatives. If I find one I like, I’ll post about it.

Mandrill email no longer free

If you use Mandrill’s email service, you should start looking for an alternative. Unless you think $20 per month seems like good value to send a few emails.

I originally started using Mandrill because my Internet Service Provider’s email service was increasingly less willing to process email from domains I host, including boot13.com. If you don’t host your own domains, and you don’t send large quantities of email, you’re unlikely to ever need a ‘transactional email’ service like Mandrill.

Luckily, there are plenty of alternatives to Mandrill. Right now I’m evaluating MailGun, which is free for up to 10,000 emails per month, and supports DKIM and SPF, technologies that help to identify legitimate senders and reduce spam.