Google+

Google Plus Logo from 2015

Google+ was a social media service operated by Google from 2011 to 2019. It was originally created as a way to compete with Facebook and other similar social media sites. Although exact figures are impossible to determine, Google+ had a considerable user base belonging to the furry fandom, with its two largest furry communities harboring roughly 29,000 and 16,000 members, respectively, at their peak.

Features

In its later versions, Google+ was attractive to some users due to some of its unique features and intended uses. Most notably, Google+ was one of few large social media platforms designed for users to connect with total strangers based on shared interests, which helped it to gather a large user-base involved in various online communities, including furry. The communities feature on Google+ was the main method by which users found and connected with others, either by joining a preexisting community or by creating their own. Users could also follow others' individual accounts, or exclusively a certain compilation of posts from another user grouped into a "collection."

Google Plus and Furry

Many individual furry centered communities existed on Google+, largely due to the fact that any user could create a community of their own. The vast majority of these communities were, inevitably, small and unsuccessful in maintaining activity for extended periods of time due to numerous reasons (insufficient member count, inactive/incompetent staff, difficulty to find in search, narrow target demographic, being set as "ask to join," raiding, etc.). Despite their content violating Google's terms of service, NSFW furry communities were not difficult to come across on the site, although were often very short-lived. Google+ contained two main furry communities which were ★║FURRIES║★, with a peak membership of 29,000 and Furry Fandom with a peak membership of 16,000. Furry Fandom was created originally by Felix Fox, and co-owned by user Henry Pailing. Felix Fox, Henry Pailing, and a few of their former moderators abandoned the community towards the end of 2016; neither owners were active on the community leading up to this point.