Google+, the past and now

This year saw the end of consumer Google+ where both Google+ profiles (by consumer Google Accounts typically ending with @gmail.com) and Google+ Pages (both by consumer and G Suite accounts) were shutdown on April 2, 2019. I had the privilege to use the Google+ when it was still the classic version and then the new version though I remember the new version much better. I had used Google+ for maybe about 3 years.

The parts of Google+ I played with and used at times was becoming a member of communities then contributing to them, whether it was about photography (though mostly in those communities, I just liked looking at their photos!) or the Official Google+ Help or another other interesting topics to me such as Chromebooks. I wrote my own collections though never quite got them fully off the ground and tried to write about 3 different topics, which were of nursing, other great communities on G+, and a sleep journey of sorts to talk about how to sleep better and my own sleep journal. I followed multiple collections about Google products, photos, and wildlife. Then sometimes I wrote private messages to only one user or did a completely public post not inside of a collection or community. I used the different features inside of a post such as adding a link, adding photos, then the only feature I never used was the location where you could add a location to a post (which worked on a mobile device).

Many users still ask about what has happened to consumer Google+ and why they can not log into it anymore. Recently one user asked if Google was done deleting all of consumer Google+ and for some people, you might notice you still see plus.google.com links inside of your Web&App Activity and still see some "photos from posts" inside of get.google.com/albumarchive. Some users wonder if they can migrate over to G Suite to continue to use Google+ though that experience will be different since that is not completely public and not searchable on the Google Search engine.

Many users will comment about how all their friends were on Google+ and how are they supposed to continue to have a social profile of some sort to continue networking with others. I can relate to those users because in Google+, I found people who would become my true friends but they have stuck with me beyond the closure of consumer Google+. One nice feature of Google+ was that on Google+ profiles there was a hangouts icon where you could talk to that user through Hangouts and that is how I talk to the majority of those people is Hangouts. Google+ also allowed you to do direct messages between you and someone else by creating a post that is strictly between you two and there if needed be, you could trade email address and other information like that without the fear of the post becoming public or findable on Google Search engine. Google also made it where you could not switch visibility of communities and posts from public to private or private to public.

Google+ still exists for G Suite domains typically administered by businesses or schools. The inside of G Suite Google+ still looks the same to me as well except 'discover' does not show everything on Google+ anymore. Discover shows things within your domain however so if that domain has any communities or any posts by people within your domain it will show in this section. To find communities outside of your domain that you can possible join or people you can follow, you have to use the search bar which still works in the same manner which is just typing in some keywords and seeing what you can find. If a community had at least one G Suite owner and was set to public (meaning people outside of that domain could see it and join it) before the consumer closure, you can ask to join and see if you could get accepted. I asked to join the G Suite for Education community and was accepted so some owners and moderators are still somewhat active on Google+ and/or looking at their email notifications.

Some great articles about the shutdown plus G Suite Google+:
https://support.google.com/plus/answer/9217723?hl=en
https://support.google.com/a/answer/9229693?hl=en (do note, that the admins have to enable Google+ for their members to even use it and information about that https://support.google.com/a/answer/1631746?hl=en)
If you have G Suite Google+ and want to learn about it more from a G Suite point of view, go through https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9247362 which is found in the G Suite Learning Center though some articles inside of the Google+ Help Center https://support.google.com/plus/?hl=en#topic=9259565 will still work meaning instructions should be able to be utilized but if they don't, do recall that consumer Google+ was discontinued and some features do not work in necessarily the same way or might not even exist anymore.

A screenshot of consumer Google+ showing what you might have seen on the left hand side and the URL at the top indicates I was looking at someone's profile so in the screenshot you also see the name of the person and the profile picture

A screenshot of G Suite Google+ where you can still see people's profiles and they can enable communities on their profile so you can see a list of that but you can tell now you can see less things on the left hand side of Google+ so there is no circle streams but all the icons remain the same.

A screenshot of Consumer Google+ when you clicked on a person's name whether they were mentioned in a post or comment or they were the author of the comment or post or you found the name in the member's list of a community so in a way this is like a hover card since you are not directly brought to the user's profile (you need to click on the "G+ see all posts" phrase). At the right of the name, you can see several symbols...for Hangouts, you could start a hangouts without knowing the person's email address or phone number. All the other functions that are greyed out, you need to have that particular information to have that icon white for you so for email, you need email address. For call, you need phone number. For schedule, I assume that is needing an email address and this would become a calendar invite.

Same person as above but this was taken now and in G Suite Google+ and you can see that some things have changed with the format (besides the user changed their profile picture). You can see that Hangouts is now the 3rd option in the row. To go to the person's profile, you now click on "See their Google+ profile". The red circle with the + and head bust is not a follow function but it is to add the person to your contacts.google.com (which is honestly a bit confusing to me!). To follow the person, you need to find the button that physically says "follow" on their profile, which the button does look the same to me as in consumer Google+.