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Books written by Ray Sullivan

Friday 25 April 2014

Will it go round in circles?

Back in the day I bought a live LP by a guy called Billy Preston that included the title of this posting. The song itself has a blues and gospel history and was a decent reworking by Billy and his group, the God Squad if memory serves me correctly. The LP is up in the attic with other obsolete artefacts and I hadn't given it a thought in years until today.

Google looks like it is giving up its intentions to challenge Facebook with its Google + endeavour, the social medium that promoted Google Circles. The reality is I don't think many of us understood what Google+ was trying to do - to be fair, I'm not sure Google knew either. I'm fairly certain they wanted to take a chunk out of Facebook's market, but tried to do it in such a way that it didn't make much sense. I'm in a few Google Circles because I've been invited in by people I've never heard of - in itself an established practise on Twitter - but haven't felt any compunction to follow it up or generate other contacts. In truth it just seems that little too complicated.

Not that I'm necessarily the right person to review it. Sure, I've got a Twitter account that I use pretty much to promote my books, if a little half-arsed (although I do post my blog entries there), and I do have three FB accounts, but don't tell Facebook. If they find out that not all of their accounts are real and unique it could affect their share price, bless them. Why three? Well there's the mandatory one I can share personal stuff with family - a bit one way as I forget to look let alone post, one to promote my books (and perhaps the one that linked you to this entry, via that Twitter posting), and then there's the one I run on behalf of the criminal mastermind B L O'Feld, megalomaniac owner of B L O'Feld Megalomaniac Industries (BLOMI) as he's rather busy cooking up evil plans to destroy the planet. If you haven't met Barry Liam O'Feld then why not take a peek at his website (link at foot of this blog) or take a loom at Project: Evil, the nook of world domination gone wrong, all on sound project management principles.

Yet I never felt the compunction to utilise Google+ to promote my books. Maybe the failing was mine, apparently it's the second largest social network on the planet but largely so because you can't do anything on Google these days without pushing the 'oh go on, enrol me' button first. Google are saying goodbye to the guy who has made Google+ work, or actually hasn't, which I guess is why he's leaving, but maintain that they are stripping enough of our data from the technically defunct social network without it actually becoming popular - or even known about, come to that, anyway. So that's ok, as long as they're monetising my data, I don't mind.

Actually I do mind, a little bit, but realise I can't do much about it apart from setting my circles into a terminal spiral. It's not like I can try and 'monetise' my books through Google - according to Google Books I don't exist. So promoting my new book, Assassin, released on 1st May through Apple, B&N, maybe Amazon if I time it right, on Google is unlikely, unless you include Blogger. But who reads blogs?

I guess I'll consign Google+ to the attic, along with Billy Preston (who also played the organ on 'Let It Be' for the Beatles in an earlier phase of his career, BTW). The difference is that one day I'll get the Billy Preston LP down and give it a spin. That one will go around on circles.

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