Google+ Users Find a New Digital Home at MeWe
Launched in 2011 to much fanfare, Google Plus now exits not with a bang, but a whimper. Granted, the platform supposedly had more than two billion registered users, but the majority were really just Google “Gmail” account holders who received their Google Plus account by default. Google reported that 90 percent of Google Plus user sessions lasted less than five seconds.
Google blames such “low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations” for its decision. What the company didn’t talk much about was the 3-year bug they fessed up to only in December 2018, that exposed the private personal data of 52.5 million accounts — that was the final nail in the coffin. In a rush to move on from Plus, Google has now even sped up the timeline for its demise from August to April (the company already started shutting down features in early February).
If you do the math, ten percent active users out of two billion registered ones is still a significant number. For the remaining G+ users, there’s now a sense of urgency. What now? Who’s going to help all the educators around the world who use Google Plus to share teaching strategies and answer questions? What about all the tabletop role-paying game fans who share their projects, ideas and characters? These people are looking for a new home and many of them have found it at MeWe.
The MeWe social network has been riding a huge upswing lately, and mass migration of Google Plus refugees has certainly played a big role in its growth. In 2018, MeWe’s user base grew 405% and already in 2019 it’s growing three times as fast on an average daily basis than in 2018 — and that’s all organic growth with no advertising — word of mouth from MeWe members spreading the news.
With data privacy issues dominating the news these days, the G+ refugees are turning towards MeWe, a platform they believe has the familiar features and their best privacy interests at heart. They also have faith in MeWe’s staying power because honestly, why would anyone want to reestablish themselves on social media over and over again? With the team of established tech visionaries behind MeWe, including the inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, as a key advisor, Google Plus users have faith that MeWe is in it for the long term.
Most importantly, Google Plus-to-MeWe converts are sharing that MeWe is fun, helpful, and useful. They like that it’s ad-free and has an easy-to-use interface along with great features such as pages, groups, chat, your own personal cloud, unique profiles protected against spying and targeting, voice integration, enhanced permission controls and a whole lot more.
Like any platform, MeWe isn’t perfect, and Google Plus users who have joined MeWe are actively letting MeWe’s developers know about features they’d like to see, including those they loved on Google Plus.
The nice thing is, MeWe’s developers welcome the suggestions and act on them. For example, one feature Google Plus users told MeWe they love is Circles — MeWe will soon introduce a similar feature that lets members post to specific contacts. MeWe’s Product Director, Jason Hardy, even did a video interview where he answered questions in real-time from a popular Google Plus gaming community to help them learn about MeWe, and find out what features they wanted most.
MeWe’s design, product, and marketing teams communicate every day with Google Plus users via Twitter, Google Plus, and most often in their new groups on MeWe, serving these new members while helping them onboard seamlessly and feel right at home.
Best of all, MeWe is answering the call of Google Plus users who want to take their G+ data with them as they move to MeWe. By March 12 or sooner, MeWe is launching the G+ MeWe Importer, an exciting tool that lets Google Plus users take all their public G+ posts, public collection, and community posts and import them seamlessly onto their MeWe timelines. Improvements to this tool will continue after that, including the ability to import data from Circles onto MeWe, which is expected by April 1.
PRESTO — Google Plus users can easily transition to MeWe without having to “start all over.”
When was the last time Facebook listened to anything users were demanding? Sure, Facebook executives will tell you they care, but social media users are getting wise to the fact that Facebook views users as merely targets to market to and data to sell. MeWe’s members are its customers to serve.
A true social media platform is not an add-on like G+ was — it should be the primary, dedicated focus of its parent company. As more and more Google Plus users move to MeWe, they are discovering that it is a delightful new place to call home, and to that, everyone at MeWe says, “Welcome!”
Mark Weinstein is a leading privacy advocate and the CEO of MeWe, the award-winning social network with a Privacy Bill of Rights and the №1 Trending Social Site.
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