Now that many people know how Google+ is better than Facebook, they are switching to G+. Some people though just don’t know how to gracefully make the jump. Or maybe a person just doesn’t want to lose everything they have been working on in Facebook. Well here is a quick guide on how to salvage as much as you can and make Google+ your Facebook replacement.First of all, you’ll have to get an invitation. If you’re not already on Google+, you need someone that is on it to invite you. It shouldn’t be to hard, there are already at least 20 million people on the service according to some recent things that Google has been saying. If you can’t wrangle one up yourself just send me and email at Devon@TheTechblender.com with your Gmail account and I’ll get one for you.So here are a couple of tips that I’ve found to minimize the amount of stuff you’re losing from switching over from Facebook. Most of them are pretty simple.
- Find your friends – The first thing you need to do to make it feel like home is get all of your friends back. Search out and add anyone you want but for the people that haven’t created a Google+ account yet, invite them. If it’s not a lot of people, it’s not to hard to do. One of the easiest ways to automatically add all of your Facebook friends is to add them through Yahoo Mail. Who would have ever thought that, right? But after you log into a Yahoo account, you can import all your Facebook friends to Yahoo. Then once back in G+, you can import all your Yahoo contacts. And there you are, all of your Facebook friends, now in Google+.
- Transfer your data – Facebook recently made this a little bit easier to do with their download option. If you go to the Account drop down and click Account Settings, there will be an option at the bottom of the page that says “Download a copy of your Facebook data.” This will download a big .zip file with all your information, pictures and videos in it. Now you have everything in one spot to upload it nice and quickly to Google+.
- Let everyone know – To make sure that you aren’t missing anything on Facebook, let people know you are switching to G+. Post a link to your profile, change your profile picture to say you’ve left for G+, just do something so that someone doesn’t leave an important message on your wall and you never get it.
- Create new accounts everywhere else – One thing a lot of start-ups and other websites has been doing lately is allowing people to sign up and log in with their Facebook credentials. Make a note of which websites you have done this with before deleting your Facebook account. Hopefully you can alternately log on with your email address used but if not, you may want to look at creating a new account with them anyways.
Have you contemplated deleting your Facebook account? Have any other good tips for migrating to Google+? Let us know in the comments!
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3 thoughts on “Ditching Facebook For Google+”
Just because a service is new and different doesn’t make it better. Facebook services its niche quite nicely: comparing Google+ and Facebook to each other because they are both social media outlets is similar to comparing foursquare and twitter.
I think that Google+ and Facebook are very alike in their design and what they are trying to do the only thing different is how people are using them. In the statement above, that I said Google+ is better than Facebook, I was referring to another article that I wrote where I noted a couple features that G+ has that I wish Facebook had.
I disagree in respect to “their design.” If you are referring to their appearance sure, they look alike, I’ll agree with you there. However Google+ really made an effort to separate your social circles, as you pointed out in your other article. I believe this is THE defining thing about Google+, and what makes it a totally different creature.
Facebook is comparable to walking into a private club: once you’re past the “friend bouncer” you’re in. Google+ is more like walking into an apartment building and going to the room you wish to talk to, OR posting on the bulletin board. Facebook does a good job in keeping things relatively simple for everyone to find their old friends. Can you imagine 40+ year old’s using Google+ to try and find, organize, and communicate with their classmates? Neither can I 😉
If this is what you meant by “how people are using them” then I would again say that is why facebook is an apple and Google+ is an orange: they are not meant to be used the same.