Torvalds. David Brin. Tim O'Reilly (although Tim uses or used to use multiple platforms in an ongoing fashion). Randall Schwartz. A few others I'm not thinking of right now.

Plus garnered a bit of a "tech"/thinker corner. I don't know whether it has any remaining vibrancy/growth, at this point, or whether its mostly a matter of inertia combined with the crapitude of other platforms for the particular communicating they are doing.

Too bad Plus was so thoroughly hosed from the start by political agendas.

OT: At Christmas, I stopped accessing Facebook. I thought it would be for a few days or a week. Coming up on two months, soon, and I haven't been able to make myself go back. Even with a relatively small set of FB friends whom I actually, personally know, and who are nice and not rabid and actually respond meaningfully to some of my own contributions, there.

In some ways, the impersonal, more technical content on Plus (and here, and etc.) is easier. There is no "missing aspect" as there is with FB engagement with friends.

Twitter? Gave up on that years ago. Tim O'Reilly had an interesting post or two about some of its positive, community aspects, in its early days. But now, it just mostly seems a megaphone for the loud and discontent.

And then, too, anywhere Trump et al. are and that seems to aid his lying megalomania. I'm not inclined to lend it the (incremental) support of my participation.

If he's a particular indication of their future, well, then, welcome to the gutter, Twitter.

Are you sure there weren't some sort of recruitment effort with at least some of those guys... Though you do see some tech pages out there, maybe because of Hangouts? shrug

I didn't know Tim O'Reilly was on G+ but ALL these recent posts are pop-politics and ugly at that! I thought you were referring to all Google services being tied in.

I don't know. Good point. I expect some, e.g. O'Reilly, were actively solicited.

I don't spend too much time in Plus. Brin has had a lot of political stuff, recently, although he's a bit mixed and individual in his opinions and they do tend to tie back to points modeled in his sci-fi writing.

O'Reilly I see less frequently. I suppose he's getting more "elder statesman", too.

Torvalds actually addresses some tech stuff. Though he has personal stuff, too -- he does not use it as a "tech blog".

Reminds me some of Tim Bray's "Ongoing" blog -- self-hosted -- that I haven't been to in a while. A personal take, on both tech and other stuff in his life. Whatever the topic, informed, intelligent, and thoughtful. Creative, too.

I don't think Plus is in any kind of a steady state. Even what I wrote about, may well be in decline. Maybe it was better a few years ago.

Regardless, this year's politics have really shocked a lot of people, and this is spilling over into erstwhile non-political venues.

Robert Scoble uses Facebook.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble Twitter: https://twitter.com/Scobleizer

Of note for Scoble is that there's much more room to talk on Facebook than twitter. I wonder if that's a similar reason that Torvalds uses G+

Quite probably, G+ also doesn't beg for login like Facebook does sometimes so it's easier to use without an account.

Oddly, when I clicked on Linus's G+ link it redirected me to a G+ advertising sequence, complete with web popups. I had to click a second time to actually get there.

I think that may be my biggest issue with G+ (despite so few people using it)... they keep changing it. Facebook evolves much more slowly, so it's much more predictable and comfortable to the distracted and comfort-seeking social media user like myself. G+ is constantly experimenting and I can't easily pin down exactly what it is...

Is there a service that can aggregate posts from people in Google+, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, patreon, etc?

The closest I get is the Flipboard app.

Carmack used to, didn't he? Until Facebook hired him?

Carmack uses Twitter a lot. But he uses Facebook for longer posts.