When it came out, Google+ addressed many of the complaints I had with Facebook (already dominant). No annoying app/game spam which was a major annoyance on FB

When it came out, Google+ addressed many of the complaints I had with Facebook (already dominant). No annoying app/game spam which was a major annoyance on FB back then--I didn't want to grant god-knows-who access to my profile just to play a game or take some stupid quiz. And gee, look what happened with Cambridge Analytica and friends? The other one was lack of a simple way to post to specific sets of contacts. Silly irreverent posts, photos, links, etc. went to friends. Daily life/bloggy type stuff went to friends and family. Things I wanted to share with the world went to public. Facebook never made that easy. Plus I was already using their IM platform as GChat-cum-Hangouts on phone and desktop so no need to dick around with Facebook's IM app. But regardless of how good or bad any feature of G+ (or any other challenger) was, the issue was the same: unless all of your contacts actively moved over, you were shouting into the wind. The days of choosing your favorite webmail provider allowed competition in that space because they all did basically the same thing. Nobody else had to do anything differently. You just pick the one you like and maybe set up a forwarding address at your old one. With closed social networking sites, you can argue that the only thing that matters is size of userbase. And if Facebook was the first to get not only the kids and the techies, but your mom, your neighbors, your barber, and your bartender, how many of those do you think will care enough about a cleaner UI or better photo hosting to cross-post or pull up stakes? I don't even care about Google+ per se. I am bummed about some of the groups I was in who had to find a new platform, but mainly I just wish there was some way to accomplish the same thing while allowing people to choose their preferred service.