Why I Oughta...

I received this note from Google Local Guides telling me that one of my photos on Google Maps has hit 6M views.  It is of this pet store in Naperville that I posted back in 2016.   I've been chronicling my Google Local Guides experience over time here on the blog .  The last time I looked at the stats was back in May of 2018 when I had 4M OVERALL photo views .   Before that, in February of 2017, I was at 2.5M views . So, this one photo has 6M views alone.  And, when I went to look at my overall views, I'm now at 15M photo views.  That's 4X growth in 32 months.

I've posted about my participation in the Google Local Guides program where you provide reviews, ratings and photos of local businesses and places.  I've been doing it for a couple of years and have hit a few milestones along the way.  This week, Google emailed me this note you see above:  my photos have been viewed 4M times.  Yeah...four million.  That's crazy, but with Google's scale, I guess it shouldn't be surprising. In February of 2017, I shared the previous milestone:  2.5M photo views .  So, it took me 14 months or so to get the next 1.5M views.  In March of 2016, I hit "Level 4" on the platform .  Today, I'm a "Level 7".  And guess what?  This email made me go back into the system and add a few more photos and engage even more.  Nurturing at it's best, right? 

Back in May, I posted about hitting level 4 on the Google Local Guides program which gives you a nice storage bonus for photos and docs and gmail.  I've been contributing to the Local Guide program - which is where you submit your reviews/ratings as well as photos of local places to Google Maps - ever since and every few weeks, Google sends you a little update on how well your stuff is faring.  Sometimes, it is how many people are being helped by your photos and other times it is how often your reviews are being shared, etc. Recently, I received the email above that shows that my photos have now hit 2.5M combined views.  I have no idea what that means, other than it seems like a big number.  As a Local Guide, you can go in and see all of your contributions and even see which photos have the most views (t his photo of Silver Beach Pizza in St. Joe's is my most-viewed photo ever). Kind of interesting to see which photos people are using and how they're helping.  The

Well...Thanks Google!  Look at what they sent me recently for being a participant in their Local Guides program :  Free Google Drive Upgrade to 1 TB.  Granted, it is only for 2 years, but still a nice little perk for being a Local Guide Level 4 . See below for the current state of my usage of storage at Google.  I'm currently at 38 GB of storage used.  And now with my 1.1 Terabyte storage allocation, I'm using a paltry 3% of the available storage.  Great googly moogly! That's a lot of photos and documents and videos.     Before this upgrade, I was on the $1.99/month 100 GB plan and I was using almost 40% of that.  I think I can cancel my $1.99/month now, right?  Lose that .1 in the number? Wonder how the renewal works.  Do I have to maintain my Level 4 status somehow?  According to the storage page, the 1 TB/month plan costs $9.99/month, so let's call it almost a $250 gift. #ThanksGoogle!