On resisting shiny objects

The previous post (compiling responses to my question on Twitter about why there seems to be more PaaS activity in public Clouds than private Clouds) is actually a slightly-edited repost of something I first posted on Google+.

I posted it as “public” which, Google+ says, means “Visible to anyone (public on the web)”. Except it isn’t. If I go to the link above in another browser (not logged to my Google account) I get nothing but an invitation to join Google+. How AOLy. How Facebooky. How non-Googly.

Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Or there’s a huge bug in Google+. Or I don’t understand what “public on the web” means. In any case, this is not what I need. I want to be able to point people on Twitter who saw my question (and, in some cases, responded to it) to a compilation of answers. Whether they use Google+ or not.

So I copy/pasted the compilation to my blog.

Then I realized that this is obviously what I should have done in the first place:

• It’s truly public.
• It brings activity to my somewhat-neglected blog.
• My blog is about IT management and Cloud, which is the topic at hand, my Google+ stream is about… nothing really so far.
• The terms of use (for me as the writer and for my readers) are mine.
• I can format the way I want (human-readable text that acts as a link as opposed to having to show the URL, what a concept!).
• I know it will be around and available in an open format (you’re probably reading this in an RSS/Atom reader, aren’t you?)
• There is no ad and never will be any.
• I get the HTTP log if I care to see the traffic to the page.
• Commenters can use pseudonyms!

It hurts to admit it, but the thought process (or lack thereof) that led me to initially use Google+ goes along the lines of “I have this Google+ account that I’m not really using and I am sympathetic to Google+ (for reasons explained by James Fallows plus a genuine appreciation of the technical task) and, hey, here is something that could go on it so let’s put it there”. As opposed to what it should have been: “I have this piece of text full of links that I want to share, what would be the best place to do it?”, which screams “blog!” as the answer.

I consider myself generally pretty good at resisting shiny objects, but obviously I still need to work on it. I’m back to my previous opinion on Google+: it’s nice and well-built but right now I don’t really have a use for it.

I used to say “I haven’t found a use for it” but why should I search for one?