The writing was on the wall from the moment Google Plus was announced, but it was only made official last week: Google Buzz is shutting down. Speed Force has been available on Buzz since June 2010, but even now, only 22 people are following it, including me, and when I asked who was reading it through Buzz, only two people answered. For comparison, about 700 people “like” the site on Facebook, and almost 900 follow through Twitter.
I’ve taken down the follow links since they won’t matter soon, but posts will keep going out until they shut it down. If you’re one of those 21 people following through Buzz today, you have a number of other options:
- Google Reader
- My Yahoo!
- LiveJournal syndication
- Networked Blogs
- RSS feed for any news reader
- Subscribe by Email (yes, email!)
And then there are the other, more active social networks. I haven’t set up Google+ yet because they haven’t launched business/group accounts yet, and everything’s still structured around actual people. (You can find me there, but I don’t post about comics much under my own name.) So your best bet for now is to follow Speed Force using one of the subscriptions above, or on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.
UPDATE November: We’re on Google+!
I just FOUND this blog a few minutes ago! I’m sorry you took down the Follow links. How does this Tumblr thing work, and what is it going to mean that they’re shutting down the Buzz? Is this blog going to be shut down?
Thanks!
Nothing’s happening to the blog. You’ll just have to keep up with it through a method other than Google Buzz, because Buzz won’t exist anymore.
Actually, I believe Google Reader will also be going away, replaced with Google+.
My understanding is that Reader itself will still be around and a stand-alone app, but its sharing and “like” functionality will be integrated with G+.
I think the ‘Speed Force’ Buzz page got turned into a G+ page.
Huh? It looks the same as it did before. Buzz is mentioned, but not Google Plus.
And honestly, you’d think that after all the trouble Google got in for automatically adding people to Buzz in the first place, they’d have the sense to keep Plus as strictly opt-in.
I guess I haven’t seen the Buzz profiles in awhile — it made me think of G+, but you’re right there is a difference.