Normally I'd just shrug it off as another failed social media network, but Google's insistence on competing with Facebook has seriously damaged their reputation in my eyes.
So for the last year or so YouTube has asked me at least once a month about changing my account name from "gregjbaldwin" to something more, uh, professional I guess? And every time they do this I tell them to F off and they're like "okay, we'll ask again later!" Well, a few days ago it finally happened: they forced me to change my user name but they did it in such a way that I'm still not sure exactly what the hell happened, but this is the result:
Uhhhhhh???
So here's what these knuckleheads did. Because Google refuses to acknowledge that Google+ is a failure of Titanic proportions, they've been finding ways to force feed it down our throats. What they've done here is basically connecting your YouTube account (because Google owns YT, of course) to your Google+ account that you kind of sign up for by default whenever you sign up for Gmail. So now I have, like, two YouTube accounts: one as my original gregjbaldwin account that I've been using since 2006, and a new Greg Baldwin account that's linked directly to my Google+ account.
WWWWTTTTTTTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF???
Mind. Blown. Seriously.
I don't get it. Like, at all. What the hell is the point of this other than what I've outlined above? Has Google invested so much into Google+ that they just refuse to eat the losses? I mean, other than Google Hangouts, what features does Google+ even have? It's basically a less populated Facebook, that's it. Remember when it first came out and you needed an invite in order to use it? It was super exclusive and everyone was anticipating a rival to Facebook. Then when it officially launched everyone was like ???
Two of my Google+ connections regularly use it; one is Rich Samuels of The World According to Rich who uses the hangouts frequently. The other is Mark Cuban, eccentric billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks. That's it.
I guess the good news is that now I have two YouTube accounts for some reason:
If you think about it, this kind of encourages trolling
I do get what Google is trying to do by connecting all of their services so you just need one account to e-mail, watch videos, chat with friends, etc. But the way they've done it is so sloppy that even Honey Boo Boo would ask them wtf they're doing. And really, the continued forceful use of Google+? This is what I say to that: