Why Google Plus Will Take Over the (web) World

   Facebook was the biggest internet sensation, since well, nothing really.  It was and continues to be the biggest thing to hit the internet that is legal for all, if you catch my drift.  Facebook was launched by a group of college aged students, and geared toward college aged people, but it grew to so much more than that and quickly expanded its horizons to include people of any and all ages. For better or worse that made the site have more than 500 million worldwide users and made Mark Zuckerberg the youngest self made billionaire in the world. That's all fine and dandy, but today they've went to far.
   Today Facebook rolled out some pretty massive changes, changes that I, and seemingly everyone of the 2500+ (well at least those that have managed to figure out how to post their hatred of the changes that is) people on my contacts list don't like.  The old design was superior in ease of use; that's pretty much all that matters in today's world.  It was easy to use, so everyone used it. end of story.
   Also today, in a completely related note, Google Plus emerged from it's closed beta and can now be used by the masses.  Personally, I'm a big fan of just about anything Google does.  I find its search engine to be the best for diverse uses, I've had a Gmail account since high school, and Google Chrome is the only browser I use when I have a chance.  They also have many, many other services that I use, just not quite as often.
   I was invited to Google Plus the end of June or early July, sometime in that week anyway.  I was soon to head off on a vacation so I didn't even activate it at that time.  When I returned from North Carolina, after an average to below average trip (That is a story for another day though...) I finally hooked into Google Plus, and found that it was a bit foreign in concept to me.  Being honest, I didn't spend a lot of time on it then, and have rarely logged back in since.  That was however during the closed beta test when most of my friends didn't have accounts either.
   Now that the beta is open to the general public, I honestly feel that Google will knock this out of the park as well.  With the negative changes Facebook has made it's only a matter of time before people jump ship. So mark my words, Google Plus will take over the web world, and eventually it too will fall. Facebook is not the be all end all of social networking sites, it's just the best one around today. That could change tomorrow though, I mean just look to the past, does anyone even remember what a Myspace account is?

Zynga,You have got to be kidding me.

   I like many millions of people got downright addicted to the original Mafia Wars game not long after it was released. It was far from a perfect game, but it didn't require any time commitment like a traditional game. You could play for hours on end, or if you had 30 seconds between whatever else you were doing.  It many ways it was a perfect game for a the modern society of people that have issues focusing.  The game continued to grow and grow, as did the number of both daily and monthly active users. I'm not going into great detail about the exact gameplay because lets face it, if you got this far, you know the game.
   Then game started to expand, offering more and more items to collect, and eventually opening up new cities to explore and take your 500 best mafia buds with you to conquer.  Along the way, fans discovered that Zynga either didn't care, or had a large group on vastly inferior programmers. The only thing worse than the programmers are the customer support people that obviously don't play the game and understand the issues that people have.  Improvements were made, but rarely were they properly beta tested before hand.  Often any improvements that were added took away or broke other aspects of the game. The diehards moved on with the game though. As I write this even they are working out the bugs in the newest city that went live last night, then was taken back down when a major glitch appeared that affected thousands of players accounts. Now it appears that Zynga is ready to screw the pooch again, as they get ready to launch Mafia Wars 2.

   A preview trailer has appeared today on the Facebook page for Mafia Wars 2, but it shows absolutely no game play, and only poorly animated 'scenes' from the game. This is poorly conceived on two fronts for the fan base.  First off, the company has never once shown that they are capable of coding a game properly.  Now they expect us to believe that they can code and properly made a 3D fully interactive game. I'll never believe it.  The other side to this coin, is that while this is a free game, there is the option to pay to improve your character ( I would say gameplay but that's just not true...) and many people have put in anywhere from $5 to several thousand dollars on their characters. Regardless of how long they hang on to the original Mafia Wars, creating an entirely new game let's players know that eventually they will phase out the original.  I just don't get why they don't leave well enough alone and keep 'upgrading and improving' the product that has gotten them this far. Fix what is broken before you move on to something new that's even more broken.

There I've said my piece, though that's not what this blog posting was originally going to be about. Expect another Mafia Wars related post in the future.

Neat-O

   Life as a journalist is always interesting, no two days are ever alike.  Two very neat things have happened to me in the last three days that I just have to share with you all.
   First off, I covered a fantastic event on Saturday that was called Victory Day. I've posted the slide show already on our site, and a large story will be running soon. There are also 7 short videos on our site that will be linked to those stories, so if you are interested in that at all, I encourage you to check back on the News-Herald site in the future. The event would have been special enough, as I'm always amazed when people, especially kids are willing to give back.
   Victory Day was all about helping children with either physical or mental disorders and giving them a day to be just one of the group instead of sticking out in the crowd. Personally I volunteered to cover the event (Yes that means I didn't get paid to do it.) and I did so for numerous reasons. I would be remiss though if I didn't say that one of the reasons was that former University of Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr was the keynote speaker. For those that know me, they know that I'm a huge college football fan, and that UM has been my favorite team since I was young. Carr won a national championship in 1997 and forever made himself one of my heroes. I went just to hear him speak.
   However, when I got there, the opportunity to speak with the coach one on one arose, and he made himself even a better person in my eyes. He spoke to me like an equal, and even took the time out to introduce me to other people from a couple of other news organizations and in the community as a whole just because we were talking as they walked up.  That impressed me two-fold, one that he thought enough of me to introduce me to them, and two, he actually remembered my name, something I wouldn't expect many people that met hundreds of people that day to do.  He also impressed me in the sense that from talking to him, he was truly passionate about helping these kids and not just there for publicity.  You could see it in his eyes that he really cared.
   The second interesting thing that happened popped up this morning.  As part of my job here at the News-Herald I am expected to check on Facebook and Twitter from time to time. I logged into my FB page this morning, and what I saw as the most recent update shocked me a bit.  True it was nothing monumental but it was really cool. A story I wrote for the Sunday issue of the paper that included a quote from Congressman John Dingell had been shared via his Facebook page to all of his followers.  For a young journalist, it was just a really 'Neat-O" moment.
   Thanks for reading, and I promise I'll get back to the Nerdy with my next post. I've got plenty of topic ideas ready to go.