SXSW 2013: Trey Ratcliff Dumps Facebook Events; Posts Photo of the Day

Written by Trey Ratcliff

It’s Trey Ratcliff and his photo of the day, from his stuckincustoms.com. It’s beautiful as always, but what’s really interesting is Trey’s decision to dump Facebook Events for his SXSW 2013 photowalks. He is going with Google + all the way. We suspect he is not alone … photo credit: Trey Ratcliff: StuckinCustoms.com

aNewDomain.net — It’s our Trey Ratcliff’s photo of the day. Find all of Trey’s photos at his stuckincustoms site — and scroll below to find out why Ratcliff is dumping Facebook Events in favor of Google + to reach followers of his phenomenally popular world travel photo stream and photowalks.

treyratcliffphotoofthedaymarch42013900x600xTrey,P20Ratcliff,P20-,P20Los,P20Angeles,P20-,P20Union,P20Station,P20Illegal,P20Room-900x600.jpg.pagespeed.ic.EbTsJeiJbn Photo credit: Trey Ratcliff

As for the photo above, that’s Union Station in Los Angeles. The room was closed to photographers — I’m not sure if it was a one-time thing. But I went through the silly ropes and took a photo anyway. Read my whole post about this pic here.

Read my explanation for why I am dumping Facebook in favor of Google + here. Basically, it’s that Facebook events seem to pale in comparison to Google+ events. Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote at my StuckinCustoms site:

I’ve planned countless events in both and the Google+ events have better results.
For example, if you look at the upcoming  Austin SXSW Photowalk event in Google+, we have well over 500 people RSVP’d for the event. Compare this to the PhotoWalk I did as an event in Facebook for Paris — a much bigger city — a few months ago. A lame … 19 people RSVPd. I mean, the people weren’t lame. The number was. I have 430,000 subscribers on (Facebook) compared to over 4.5 million Google+ … so that is could be part of it, but I don’t think so … The only time I got any traction on a Facebook event is when I posted a link to the FB event to my 4.6 million Pinterest followers. As soon as I did that, a bunch of people signed up. I’m sure there is a big overlap in Pinterest and Facebook users, but none of those Facebook people would have found out about it unless I posted it on Pinterest.

There a few other x-factors in Google+. One is that it is integrated with the whole Google email and search world. So, if people use Gmail (who doesn’t???) or do a search in Google (who doesn’t???) then it is easy to find events that are happening near you and get invites from your friends. There is much less friction to sharing an event.

And Facebook search is horrible. It took me forever even to find my previous event. I did a search for “Paris Photowalk” and mine did not appear — another one appeared. Plus, I know there have been many many photowalks in Paris, and only a random one appeared.