The obvious fact is, that Google+ was closed recently. That means, it's no longer possible to update the profil, post URLs into groups and get banned from the network. Somebody may argue, that Google+ is obsolete but in reality, the project has to start again. The Google+ network is a great example to analyze what social networks are especially why it is history and we can analyze in detail what the users have done with the site.
Lots of papers and Videos are available from a time in which the network was active. Many video tutorials are describing how to post something to a Google+ group. Did the author know that Google+ is not successful? Probably not, at the time the tutorials were created, the idea was that Google+ is a success, a traffic generator in the internet, is able to influence other people and is frequented by 100 million users each day. In the high times of Google+ some users believed so. They imagined a large scale high traffic social network and if somebody stays on top of the network he can control the opinion of the public.
The interesting fact is, that apart from the wish that this story is true, Google+ had never such influence. Not Google+ provided the content but it was the internet outside of the social network. Understanding this paradoxon is not easy, because if a user is logged in into Google+ he is part of the network, isn't it?
The problems what all social media websites and content aggregators have is, that they are not very precise in this definition. The reason why Google+ was created is not because a social network is great, but because the programmers of the backend have experimented with SQL databases and automatic script. The more interesting part of a social network is the backend, which means the server which contains the raw data. The interesting question is not how to use the website from the frontend perspective, but how to program a social network from the admins point of view.
The most simple form of a social network is a mediawiki installation. Such a system can be installed on a server in under a minute. The problem is not the technical side but how to motivate the users to put information into mediawiki. If somebody is able to do so, his website is successful. From a programmer perspective there are two important questions to answer: which amount of information is stored in the SQL database already, and how to motivate the users to extend this amount of information.
In case of Google+ it's easy to answer the first question. A so called Google+ community is the visual rendering of an underlying SQL table. In the SQL table the raw textual information is stored, which are date, title, comments, URL and so on. Flodding such table with random information is easy. A simple script is able to put some URLs into the table and as a result the community gets fake traffic.
To get a more detailed picture it is important to seperate between random entries in the table which was genereted with a low effort, and real entries in the table, for example if somebody has post a comment. The difference has to do with the amount of time which was needed to create an information. Let me give an example:
A SQL table which contains 100 weblinks to recent websites in the internet can be created in no time. an automatic script can put the information into the table, because the list of URLs is already available. That means, a table with 100 weblinks contains no human work. IN contrast, a sql table which holds 2 comments, each of them with 2 paragraphs is more complicated to generate. A typical human needs some time to enter such text into a computer.
The Google+ social network has a big advantage. The tutorials videos from the past are available. Let us take a look into one of these videos. A voice from the off is explaining how to login into Google+, how to join a community and how to post something. But what is the voice from the off is explaining in reality? The voice is teaching us how to become a member of social network which has no traffic, will be closed in 2 years, has no users and is boring to use. The interesting feature of the tututorial is, that the voice didn't tell this to use. Instead it is playing a role. It seems, that Google+ was not about the network itself, but about people who are explaining who the network is working. They have made some role playing.
The funny thing is, that even today at a time in which the website is official obsolete dead we can create a Google+ tutorial video. Here a short example:
“Hello guys, there is a new exciting website in the Internet, called Google+. It has million of users and I'm explaining to you how to become a member. The first what you have to do is to create an account. Here in my screencast i will tell you the steps. It is very easy, you have to click only the sign in button, click on the checkbox and then enter your e-mail address.”
We can imagine how this tutorial will explain all the other steps. So what is the sense? The idea is, that a person is playing the role of host. The person is a gatekeeper which explains to other how the imagined social network is working. That means, Google+ was a corpus of people how are explaining what Google+ is. That means, the actors stands on empty stage and is explaining to the audience an imagined amusement park.
Let us suppose, that no Google+ tutorials are available, and no tutorials how to use the network. What is the result? Right, without these meta-information the network will be dead. The most important part of a social network are gatekeepers who are explaining who to use the network. This is especially true, if the network itself (which means the sQL database in the backend) contains nothing but URLs links created with a python script.
In the beginning of the blog post i've explained that Google+ isn't dead but it the preferred social network because the website is no longer online. This sounds a bit weird but this allows to create new tutorials of how to use the website. All what we need are some screenshot of the former Google+ network and a screenrecording software and we can imagine, that we are the host of a worldclass social network. We can explain to the newbies how to create groups, post links and find friends in the internet. By definition such a tutorial is useless, because the explained website doesn't exists in reality. But our tutorial is real.
The hypothesis is, that social networks are not located in a website, but in the tutorials. Even if Google+ is dead it's possible to play the social role of a Google+ host.