How to Import Google+ Account and Communities to MeWe

Google+ for consumers is going to definitely shutdown on April 2nd, and as written previously I had been looking for an alternative, and ended-up going with MeWe Ad-free, Privacy Focused Social Network. I created my own account, as well as two groups for development boards & SBCs and mini PCs & TV boxes.

Many users have joined MeWe because of Google+ upcoming closure, so it made sense for the company to create an importer so that all posts, and communities can be imported from Google+ into MeWe. Mark Weinstein, MeWe CEO & founder, has now announced the release of Google+ Importer and instructions in a PDF sadly written in Microsoft Word…

The steps are fairly simple:

  1. Go to https://takeout.google.com and click on “Deselect All”
  2. Select Google+ Circles, Google+ Communities, and Google+ Stream (apparently Google+ Likes is not needed), and make sure to check the format to JSON whenever possible as shown in the screenshot below.
    Google+ Export Data
  3. Click Next Step, and make sure .zip file type, 2GB archive and send download link via email are selected (default in my case), before clicking on Create Archive.
  4. Be patient and after a while you’ll receive an email to inform you only the archive is ready, and point to a link to download it.
    Google+ archive download
  5. Once you get your file, it’s time to go to your MeWe account in Settings->Data Import, and click on Upload .zip files
    MeWe Google+ Data Importer
  6. Select your Google+ “Takeout” file, and wait until the upload completes.
    Google+ Data Importer Start Import
  7. Now click on Start Import, and your status will switch to “Pending“.
    MeWe G+ Import Pending
  8. That’s all. Going on with your life, and be patient while MeWe server are handling your and other people imports. I’m still waiting for mine to be complete.

Please note that my Google+ archives are only 463.6 MB because I did not share many photos, but mostly links to CNX Software and a few other sources. However as others noted there are limitations to MeWe’s Google+ Data Importer:

Importing G+ posts into MeWe? No thanks. My G+ post media (pictures and other media embedded in posts) took almost 20GB, based on the exports I did with both official data takeout and G+ Exporter tool. MeWe can only hold 8GB for free, and I still have 7+GB left. My G+ posts would use up all that remaining free space instantly even before I finished importing everything.

Another limitation that I just discovered is that while that comment was public in MeWe, it’s not possible to share links to MeWe posts on third party platforms, but only internally.

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8 Replies to “How to Import Google+ Account and Communities to MeWe”

  1. I read you can only do the import from your computer not your phone,too bad,I don’t have a computer

    1. What’s the size of your archive? I understand there’s a 2GB limit per file. So if it’s over 2GB, you must have several files, and it can’t be over 8GB of data in total.

      By the way my import is still pending after 5 days.

  2. my file measures 1.21 mb, 7 days and still show “pending” dialog, go turtle that turned out to be MeWe …

  3. I had the same experience. The file would upload and say pending, but it would eventually just disappear. The same thing happened to my partners data. I was pretty frustrated with the whole thing, and go not response from Mewe and could not find a decent support channel.

    Anyway I tried a few others import tools, but none seemed to work the way I or my wife wanted, so I’m coding a solution myself to upload load our archives to a private Tumblr secondary blog.

    Right now, its just for us, but its a web app and all online, so once its done, I’m considering building it into a tool for others to use.
    If you any one is interested, I’m building a mail list: takein.bitwax.com.au

    To give you an idea of what I’m aiming at, I’ve got about 18GB of posts with images and videos that I want to migrate; and that will involve reviewing posts, deleting the crud, batch uploading and hosting videos on a separate platform like Vimeo

    1. Change of plans. Tumblr did suit our needs, so we built a WordPress site.
      So if your interested in importing your archives into WordPress checkout https://takein.bitwax.com.au
      But email me if you would like to send it somewhere else and I’ll investigate it as an alternative

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