When SHARE isn’t

I’ve been getting a little frustrated with google+ of late, when it comes to trying to share images stored in google+ photos across the web, in google’s blogger and indeed within google+ posts themselves. What was once a very easy task in picasa web albums, find the photo you wanted get the link (as a piece of HTML code or just a URL link) no longer works and without documentation and things just changing unannouced. I can only click on the big green share button, but that just shares back into google+ or someone in your circles or with a google gmail account. That might be a lot of people potentially but it is not the way that Tim Berners-Lee envisaged the web working. It is in reality creating a “filter bubble” and google should know better because free access to information and images on the net is their source of income, shutting people out because they are not in the google+ environment can only harm their reach, not extend it.

See Eli Pariser TED Talk  Beware of the online ”filter bubbles” for a deeper insight.

So what can be down about it? I’ve posted several question on the google help forums and so have many others without much assistance. So the google+ faithful are largely in the dark also. What I have found by experimenting is once you published a photo into google+ post and shared it publically, there will be two items to share it further under the little v option icon, on the top right hand side of the google+ post. Click on it and the second item is share this link (which gives you a unique URL for the post), and the third is embed (which gives you a new dialogue box and a panel of javascript to paste in your blog or web page) but this reproduces the whole post not just the image. So you have to essentially duplicating your post, Once inside the bubble and once outside.

There is now a share (to google+) option within bogger, to share a blog post (or more particularly the opening of it (often this text is in duplicate again, no idea why) into google+ posts, along with one of the images from the post. Only most of the time lately the images aren’t shared I just get a large version of my buddy icon from my google account. I did get an answer from Peggk on the google help forums to this one.

“If you want a big thumbnail when you share your blog post to Google+, your image must be at least 506 pixels wide AND  have an aspect ratio of no wider than 5:2 (width to height).”

And don’t get me started on all the broken links back deep in this blog. (If you see any such broken link with strange lh6.ggpht.com as part of the address, please leave a comment that there is a broken link on the post itself and I will endeavour to fix it, It is a legacy of changes in google+ for links that once worked from picasa web albums)