This is a good news, bad news situation. I’ll start with the bad news.

Google Sold Us Out…Again

If you’ve been following me on my other platforms for a while, you may have heard me talk about one of my top 10 tech tools, Google Domains. I’ll rip the bandaid 🩹 off - Google sold the entire 10,000,000+ catalog of domain assets to Squarespace. 🤬 They still haven’t communicated with its millions of customers. But the Twitterverse has spoken.

If you have ever bought a domain with Go Daddy or another registrar, you know managing the domain settings, etc., can be tricky. Plus, they try to upsell you on everything. But Google Domains made everything easy with streamlined integrations and inclusive pricing. Google Domains used to be one of my top 10 tech recommendations. I transferred all my domains from Go Daddy — which was incredibly easy!

The Gap Dēmĭstəfīed runs on Google Domains. But now I will probably re-home them before the price grace period expires in one year.

The house of Google is becoming known for creating products people love and then killing them. It’s like watching the opening of Bambi on repeat. It’s hard to know who the hunter versus the hunted is regarding Google products.

⚡ TL;DR

If you operate domains through Google Domains, they will transition to Squarespace by early fall. In all of their benevolence, Squarespace will honor Google Domains pricing for one year. Then let the onslaught of potential upselling and increased charges begin. I will be moving my domains elsewhere. I’ll let you know where they land.

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Here’s Why LinkedIn Removed Some of Your Followers

This is more of a good news situation. The social media platform in May said it would remove restricted or hibernated accounts from users’ followers count. LinkedIn was relatively quiet about the change it posted on its site over two weeks ago. If you logged in this week and saw your follower count drop dramatically, that’s why.

This is good news because it improves the validity of the metric. If you’re someone trying to build your LinkedIn presence, seeing the sudden drop in followers may have been shocking. Don’t worry, though. Those people weren’t really there. And you want to measure what’s real to improve your engagement.

Did you know you can check your LinkedIn social rating for free? Your Social Selling Index Score can be found at https://linkedin.com/sales/ssi. My score is 71/100 putting me in the top 1% of my industry 😎.

⚡ TL;DR

No. A bunch of people didn’t suddenly cancel you. To improve the effectiveness of user metrics, LinkedIn will no longer include restricted or hibernated accounts in a user’s follower count. Check your Social Selling Index Score.

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