Dear Artist, you are probably here because you have heard Google want’s to kill G+.
That’s a really sad news, as at the moment of writing, there is about 156,124 members registered in our Sketch Paint Draw community (see statistics below). Also there is a group of artists using it every single day.
In case you would like to stay in the same circle I encourage you to join the “Sketch Paint Draw” Facebook Group, which you can use to get your art seen just like in G+. The Google+ network should stop to work for private users around August 2019.
Here you can post just like on G+. The MAIN community group on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/groups/realsketchpaintdraw/
The group has been created on Jul 02, 2017 to serve as a back up plan for situations like this. The good and funny thing is, there is much less spammers on Facebook, despite the fact Google had all the tools to fight it. They tried to tell people fairy tales about their Artificial Intelligence, which couldn’t handle it. And now there is another fairy tale about the security breach.
Here is our Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/sketchpaintdraw/
which is a hand picked showcase of artworks. You could post your art there… but… the visibility is very limited due to a poor Facebook design. Total Page Users: over 7000.
Facebook page was created before G+ community and before the FB group, so that explains the difference in members count. Also we had the G+, why we would need to use FB anyway?
Really.. I’m not a Facebook fan, but at the moment that’s the only way to help you out if you’d like to get any recommendation.
Don’t forget we also have a bot who loves to share the watercolor paintings, so if you use Twitter, tag your artworks properly, then the bot gonna pick’em up.
G+ Art Community 30 day range statistics
Minds? Another social media platform, visually similar to G+
Minds is the only social network, I found interesting to use for myself and for a community page. Its layout reminds a bit the clean G+ community pages and doesn’t look obsolete like Facebook. It’s pretty fast and seems it doesn’t belong to any overrated, greedy company like G or FB. Being an open source project is also a plus. It has an accompanying mobile application.
Yes, we know many great promising sites from the past, remember chime.in ? That’s just a single example of a great social network killed by Twitter :-/.
Minds is not a recommendation from me, just a finding, you need to try it for yourself. After a one month there I still have a mixed feelings, especially it still has a pretty low user base.
If you have any suggestions feel free to comment. Kind regards, see you.. somewhere I hope!
Update: recent announcement from Google https://support.google.com/plus/answer/9195133
Additional information about the subject and the Google’s blind monopoly
Blog post Google: https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/
One more in-depth article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-data/alphabet-to-shut-google-social-site-after-user-data-exposed-idUSKCN1MI1WM
Good analysis of the Google’s attitude: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3314617/google/google-enthusiastic-users.html
The Death of Google: https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/10/08/the-death-of-google
I see no good reason why communities like Sketching, Painting and Drawing could not be kept alive. It is a great venue for sharing artwork and viewing the work of other members, and could be done without storing any sensitive, personal data.
I have avoided joining facebook, and still have no desire to do so. It’s just not my thing. Besides, I think G+ pages are neater and cleaner than facebook pages.
I hope before G+ is completely shut down that google will consider a way to keep the communities alive in a way that does not risk anyone’s privacy.
They certainly won’t keep separate features, especially they did not work on improving them. Yes, you are right that G+ looks better, Facebook sits in 90s era. What I’ve read, there will be an option to download user data and that’s it. Really after all that security breaches, cooperating with Chinese regime, restrictions on users, not fixing bugs and hosting that amounts of spam I don’t see I could stay there. Before we could have hope Google gonna fix some issues. Now it’s all gone
Honestly, sketchpaintdraw should look into MeWe… They have been great for me, still going to miss Google+ though…
Yes, I thought about that, but having already a group and a page on FB with thousands of people is pretty time consuming, I woudln’t be able to handle that anymore with another social nbetwork