I got into doing Local Guides during a Youtube Contributor Summit I was invited to in San Francisco, when one of the other contributors there suggested it as he know that I was really good at taking photo’s etc.
Hi @GenerolHavoc (again), I registered on August 2, 2016. With a number 7872 - so LGC was way under 10,000 members back then. I was already a level 5 (than the highest level) LG. Now, almost a year and a half later, it’s almost half a million. But remember; this is about (or even less) than 1% of LG’s participating in the program worldwide.
Now what it was like back then? Well, I cannot really tell as I myself (like probably many others) only started to get involved gradually.
Some very early (one- or two-digit ID’s) are of course of those Googlers who started to set up LGC. Then there was a closed beta period (you may see badges related to this beta) which was invite only and those members could tell more (unless they’re bound by a NDA).
I’ve joined the program in September 2016, and my ID is 46754. At that moment I was asking myself the very same question. So I started to explore the community starting from the end, reading the oldest post in every board, discovering people that now call me friend, and reading their first post I was taking the inspiration for my own posts, trying to be always myself.
More than one year later I still taking some time for exploring Connect, reading older post, discovering places, learning from other LG