That moment when...

I joined Google+ on the second day of the field trial while I was blogging for the Ad Council. I was 22, in college, and a nobody online. Why did I join? Because I was sick of the expectations from other places online. Facebook was for friends, but my friends weren't always interested in the stuff I was. There was Twitter, but it's impossible to engage meaningfully there. Tumblr never appealed to me either. So I joined Google+ with the intent to share anything that was interesting to me and use it as a blog. A fresh start. For a while I got no engagement, had no followers - nothing, but I was cool with that. Then one day I joined a random hangout and everything changed. I didn't know what to expect but it was there that I met a bunch of really weird and interesting strangers. They followed me. I followed them.

Little did I know that this moment would be the genesis for becoming the CEO of my own nonprofit.

Engagement picked up and I was eager to engage my new slew of followers as well. I'm generally a pretty charming and outgoing person so it didn't take long before I was added to circles like "Awesome Hangouters" or "Hangout Regulars." My follower count ballooned into the 1,000's. I was in circles that, especially in the early days of G+, were shared a ton. They contained a bunch of the leading people on G+ nowadays (and some who have left the platform behind). It was like a little club. People helped each other. Got butthurt. Fought. Shared. It was really tight-knit and it was clear that a particular group of people were rising up in the ranks and getting more engagement than the celebrities or brands flocking to the newest thing in social media.

I was one of those people, and I would eventually go on to have almost a million followers and become the CEO of my own nonprofit.