You may have seen in your online news feed that Google+ is shutting down. Google+ failed to rival Facebook and claim a slice of the social media scene. There are two main reasons for this. First, the users of Google Plus never numbered close to other social media platforms. And second, a data security bug has made it not worth maintaining. It’s unlikely you’ve been severely compromised. However, data marked as private could have potentially under some situations not remained private.

If you’ve been using Google+, you have until April 2 to download any materials you want to save. After that your Google+ account as well as any pages you have created will be shut down and deleted.

I, for one, will miss the platform, although I’ve declined in my use over the years. It was a unique collection of tech-minded people. Staying up to date on topics like paid search advertising and SEO was fun to do through the network.

There is one exception to this, and that is business users of Google+. As of now, those are going to remain. You are only a business user if you use a paid version of Google called G Suite. If you’ve been using G Suite for Gmail, Google Docs, and Google+ then talk to your administrator . They should have additional information about the fate of your Google+ accounts and pages. The rest of us can remove one social platform from our advertising and marketing budgets/attention. Then we can refocus on reaching our audience where they are more likely to be.