The Best of Both Worlds

I've been thinking of streamlining my social media accounts down to two, perhaps three & I've been pondering the possibility of asking my friends & family this question:

“If you had to choose & use only 1 or 2 social media platforms, 

which one(s) would you keep & which ones would you ditch?”

If I had to venture an answer, I'd bet even money on Facebook & Instagram coming out on top. Let's face it (no pun intended), Facebook is easy:

• Sign up
• Find friends
• Add friends
• Post things
• Like things
• Chat and/or Facetime

That pretty much sums up Facebook, it's extremely easy & w/ Messenger you can chat/group chat & Facetime people all over the planet. Instagram is just as easy: create an account & post pics and/or videos, wait for the comments.

As for me, I think I would narrow my accounts down to Twitter & Google+. I hate Facebook, I always have but I have an account there for three reasons: family, classmates, official FB Music Page; that's it. I'm rarely on there & I just don't care to be…

When I first joined Twitter I didn't “get it”, I thought to myself, “What's the fuss? This thing is over-hyped” but once I  discovered Tweetdeck, Twitter finally came alive for me. Tweetdeck has four columns: 

• Home 
• Notifications 
• Messages
• Activity 

Home is your feed, it continuously live updates so there's no refreshing. Notifications shows you who liked & who re-tweeted your tweet(s). Messages naturally shows you your messages & Activity displays the activity of those you follow (what they liked, what they commented on, etc). It's customizable too, you can delete columns or add a column to notify you when certain hashtags are used. I'm really glad they doubled the character limit to 280, that was the right move. I've met many interesting people on Twitter & I do get some interaction on it, so that is one social media platform I would keep. Here's a rundown of Twitter's features:

• 280 character limit
• Real-time feed
• Moments
• Trending
• "In the moment"/20-30 minute shelf-life on topics
• Hashtag search

Google+ is a whole different animal & I loved it from the start. In the beginning it tried to be like Facebook but quickly realized the folly of that pursuit & it grew into it's own. The neat thing is you connect w/ people & then place them into Circles & you can then post to certain Circles; so if you have a Political Circle & say a Tennis Circle, you can choose to post to the appropriate Circle. There's Communities on virtually every topic & Collections are very much like Instagram/Pinterest. The Discover feature is Google+'s answer to Twitter's trending feature but to me it's just not interesting… hey, I'm being honest! 

So Google+ is a very powerful social media platform, after all it's powered by Google & here's a quick rundown of it's features:

• Circles
• Communities
• Collections
• Discover
• unlimited character posts 
• hashtag searches
• real-time & ongoing conversations/long shelf life on topics

I have to say something about Hangouts… Hangouts was an incredible feature of Google+, in my opinion the best feature. Unsigned music artists would have Hangouts right from their homes as several people all over the country/globe watched, joined in & it was simply unique, interactive & fun. Alas, as of late 2016 the powers that be moved Google+ Hangouts/Hangouts on Air to Youtube Live but it hasn't been completely removed from Google+, just kinda hidden. 

Hangouts is very much like Skype but much more stable. There's four ways you can use Hangouts:

Google+: Simply click on a person's profile & there's the option called Hangout where you can Hangout w/ that person if they accept your invite.

Gmail: Open your Gmail & in the lower left-hand corner you'll see the Hangouts feature, add invites to people or chat/video call those already in your accepted invites.

Hangouts Home Page: Go to https://hangouts.google.com, log in w/ your Google account, invite/add someone to Hangout & there you are!

Smart Phone: Most every smart phone has the Hangouts app built-in or available, simply click the icon, again log in w/ your Google account & either chat or click the video camera icon & voila, you're video conferencing!

Note: I didn't intend for this to be a promotional page for Google & it's products but I like them, most everything is integrated & I use them.  

So I think, if I had to choose only two, I would choose Twitter & Google+ as my two social media platforms; Twitter is real-time & widely used, Google+ is interest-centered & has all the features of many other social media platforms.