Google Plus officially shut down in 2019. Read the sad story here.
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When it first opened as an invite-only social space, Google Plus made a splash, to the tune of an estimated 10 million users. As an early invitee, I was a fan, seeing great potential in its particular abilities to serve the needs of the heritage crowd online. In the time since it’s launched, Google Plus has certainly suffered some missteps. However, if you’re looking to connect with the right folks in real time while enhancing your SEO profile (useful for place-based heritage orgs) with Google, this is still a platform to consider.
One of the things that’s been missing in social networking is an elegant and simple way to hit the right audiences with your content. That’s left lots of people creating multiple accounts, reining in their opinions, or feeling like they’re spamming others who don’t share their interests. Twitter lists get you halfway in that they can readily be monitored and shared publicly. Facebook groups allow collaboration, but are fairly closed. Google hits a middle mark with Circles, which allows you to categorize other Plus users into one or more areas, and then post content to the appropriate group(s) of folks. Like Twitter you can follow and categorize people without them being obligated to follow you back, unlike the Facebook button and friending scheme.
If you’re uncertain about who you might talk to when you get to Google Plus, I have a list below of the public profiles of a few folks in my “Heritage Friends” circle. These folks are cultural heritage enthusiasts or professionals. This is a “charter” list of profile links for the earliest adopters, but I’ll break it down further as more people in the discrete areas of interest sign up.
- Jim Wald, historic preservationist at Hamphire College
- Lynne Goldstein, Professor of Anthropology at Michigan State and an archaeologist
- Kate Theimer, of ArchivesNext
- Eric Kansa, of OpenContext
- Sabra Smith, of My Own Time Machine blog
- Nancie Ravenel, conservator at Shelburne Museum
- Daniel Cull, conservator at Musical Instrument Museum
- Vincent Brown, blogger & media producer at Talking Pyramids
- Jennifer Souers Chevraux, museum consultant at Illumine Creative Solutions
- Susan Hazan, The Israel Museum
- Richard Salmon, conservation engineer
- Graeme Daley, historic preservation advocate
- Simone Gianolio, archaeologist
- Mike Gushard, architectural historian
- Nelson Knight, Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program Coordinator
- Paul Allen, Ancestry.com founder
- Paige Roberts, public historian, archivist and urban planner
- Fran Ellsworth of the FamilySearch Community team
- Amanda French, Center for History and New Media
- Bernie Frischer, University of California
- Nicolas Laracuente, archaeologist
- Iain Davidson, archaeologist
- Ethan Watrall, Michigan State University
- MT Bale, archaeologist
- Thomas Palmer, historic preservationist
- Ian Hadden, genealogist
- Jennifer Palmer, field archaeologist
- Lisa Louise Cooke, podcaster and producer of Genealogy Gems
I have about 100 people in my heritage friends circle. While you’re checking these folks out you should check out their circles as well, which are sure to be expanding. You’re likely to run into someone who shares your interests. If you’re a heritage advocate, please feel free to share your profile link in the comments. And feel free to connect with me there as well. My profile url (with my shared heritage circle) is https://plus.google.com/+JeffGuin/posts.
I think there is great potential to use the Google Plus Hangouts feature for an informal feedback version of the podcast to talk about applying the principles explained by the folks we interview here. Google is now allowing folks to stream hangouts-on-air to their YouTube pages as well, which establishes the feature’s relevance beyond simple social networking capability. Let me know if you’re interested in taking part.
Other features for heritage content discovery is the hashtag exploration feature. For example, you can search for “archaeology” and end up with an aggregation of all the latest results in a link (and page) that looks like this: https://plus.google.com/explore/Archaeology. Just substitute with any word representing your area of interest! Between “Explore” and “Circles” you can build a pretty effective blogger dashboard for social media outreach. How do you think Google Plus stacks up against other social networking tools?
Related tool:
- Google Plus Notifier for Google Chrome web browser
- App for Android
- App for iOS
Teaser image from Flickr
I am an architectural historian and consultant in Northern California. Thank you for a fantastic outlet for learning and sharing our passion for preserving the past.