Larry Page On Google+: Over 10 Million Users, 1 Billion Items Shared

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/14/larry-page-on-google-over-10-million-users-1-billion-items-shared/

by ssclafani • 15 years ago

52 49 15 years ago

techcrunch.com

tilt3• 15 years ago

"users are sharing 1 billion items per day"

"the network has already accumulated 13 percent of Facebook’s 750 million users in two weeks"

Now, that's impressive

thurn• 15 years ago

It would be more impressive if TechCrunch were better at math... 13% of Facebook's monthly active users would be 100 million, not 10 million.

Shenglong2• 15 years ago

I was thinking this too. How could the editor not catch this?

pjama• 15 years ago

10 / 750 equal to 1.3%

Am I missing something?

edwardy20• 15 years ago

Nope. Techcrunch just did their math wrong.

jcampbell12• 15 years ago

Sharing a billion items per day is obviously false as it would imply 100 items shared per user on average.

Shenglong2• 15 years ago

Unless they're counting everyone you're sharing to as a different "share"?

jnhnum1• 15 years ago

I doubt they're counting once per recipient, but people could easily be sharing 100 items on average if you count photos , reshares, and +1's.

WestCoastJustin• 15 years ago

"At 10 million users, the network has already accumulated 13 percent of Facebook's 750 million users in two weeks".

My math skills aren't what they used to be but 10m != 13% of 750m. 13% of 750,000,000 = 97,500,000. I think we're looking at ~1.3% ;)

mdwrigh2• 15 years ago

This has been updated to say 1.3% in the article

nl2• 15 years ago

It's called eventual consistency :)

andrewcooke3• 15 years ago

look at the comments on https://plus.google.com/106189723444098348646/posts/dRtqKJCb... (larry page's original post). why do people do this? i'm assuming they're random people on the internet. why do they feel the need to publicly associate themselves with a huge company's quarterly results? is it something like wanting to be seen with the cool kids at school? it goes on and on - pages and pages of "google!!!11!!". their own fragment of the american dream? or maybe people within google jockeying for visibility? perhaps people comment ironically - a bit like photobombing?

i suppose you could respond with "andrew, why do you post on hn asking q like this?". and i guess there's some kind of cachet in not being in the crowd. but i really do find it odd. i can only imagine myself making a comment like that if i was in some kind of super-happy-smashed situation like a great party. the context just doesn't fit. are those people really all "hey, yeah" in their real lives at this moment? weird, man.

also, is g+ going to implement vanity urls?

pohl• 15 years ago

I don't know what to tell you. What's the difference between this and cheering at a sporting event? People draw tribal boundaries where they want to. (I'm reminded of The Onion t-shirt that says "the sports team from my area is superior to the sports team from your area").

andrewcooke3• 15 years ago

that's a good comparison. i'm just surprised people are the same with companies - particularly with google. people here in chile are pretty fanatical about football, but i can't imagine them posting the same kind of comments on, say, some mining company's web page. so what's the difference? is this specific to web companies? social media [i guess maybe this]?

thinking more, i guess it's the whole identifying with brands thing. so google is now like apple or nike? again, i suppose it's obvious, but i wasn't aware that google was that kind of company. i guess it changed? what do people own that they've got from google? could it be android that's driving this? what's making people identify with google?

going back to the "hey yeah" feeling. i've felt that with sport, sure. but do people really feel it with quarterly earnings? this isn't just snobbery - you grow up with a football team. i don't think i would have known what quarterly results were until i was, say, 20. can something you learn that late connect in the same way?

TillE• 15 years ago

Have you ever clicked a trending topic on Twitter? Yes, people really are that vacuous. Lots of them.

muhfuhkuh• 15 years ago

Alot of people derive pleasure from seeing a product that they use yield success to its company. They're called fans (or the more derogatory term, fanboys).

Organizations relies upon these types of fans to spread the word about a product, service, or concept that they deem worthy of sharing. It's how our consumerism world goes 'round, and this association gives fans an ego boost when the rest of the consumers catch on to what they're fans of.

Maybe you associate more with the "hipster" type of fan-- one who is an early adopter and decries the product once it "goes mainstream". If you like something that no one else likes, perhaps you jealously guard it, never mentioning it to anyone else. Once it goes mainstream, you trash on it, proud of not "being in the crowd" and (as in this case) shaking your head in disbelief at the humanity of it.

tl;dr: "I liked Google when they were BackRub at Stanford. You'd probably never heard of them."

andrewcooke3• 15 years ago

that's the kind of criticism i was trying to fend off with the second paragraph. it's more surprise that anyone would do this than disdain for the other team. i think. but maybe i do need to get some skinnier jeans.

BvS• 15 years ago

Shareholders?

jrockway3• 15 years ago

Humans are hard-coded to form tribes. Remember high school? Google vs. Apple and Google vs. Facebook is like Chess vs. Football. Everyone takes sides, and everyone identifies with the side they took.

The only way to avoid this is to be very introspective and realize that taking sides is not worth being proud of: anyone can take sides, and anyone can switch sides with no effort or intelligence required. I try to do this; I like Google+ better than Facebook, so I simply use Google+ and remind my friends that they should try it. But if they want to use Facebook; fine... get my updates from somewhere else.

Similarly, there are things I'm fanboy-ish about, but these are usually things that I've invested intellectual effort into: Perl, Linux, Emacs, Free software. I get fanboyish about these topics because I've spend a good part of each day trying to make these communities better than they already are. So of course I want you to "make the jump"; that way, you can appreciate my work, which will motivate me to do more.

This is tribalism too, but I hope it's a "higher level" form.

MikeCapone• 15 years ago

Very insightful.

I'd also add that G+'s closed nature (invite only) has made the people who are in (and I'm one of those) feel a bit like they're all part of the same little family. Inhibitions are very low. This could change once the floodgates are open.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

Because they care about "why" they do things. This explains everything:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

redthrowaway2• 15 years ago

I'm happy for Google and it's success, but everyone's measuring the wrong statistics. Raw number of users isn't nearly as important as their interconnectedness. Facebook started at one school, moved to three, etc. Each new user was likely to encounter a number of people they knew using the service, and there was an instant value proposition for them. I don't get that sense from G+. Sure, there's millions of nerds on it, but I don't know many of them. Currently I have 3 real life friends using it, and a few people from school. The rest of my interaction with G+ consists of following people like Matt Cutts and Guido van Rossum. Don't get me wrong, that's an awesome feature, but I don't see it as being sufficient to bring the NORPs on board. I wouldn't be surprised to see G+'s growth plateau after the early adopters have all gotten their invites, until there's some value proposition for the current facebook/twitter crowd.

On a tangentially related note, how awesome is it that there are 10 million early adopters out there?

andrewjshults• 15 years ago

While I've seen the usual batch of tech early adopters, I've also seen a large number of high school and college friends that are not in tech who have accounts and are using them. Granted, it's nowhere near the facebook level of penetration but my actual interactions with friends on it have been of higher quality (I barely use facebook so that may have a strongly confounding effect on my results), largely because I can control who different types of content goes to.

I think the pervasiveness of G+ is going to go a long way in continuing to drive adoption and use. Facebook feels like a place I go to waste time, while G+ is always there when I'm inside of anything google (and between gmail, calendar and search that's at least once or twice an hour).

redthrowaway2• 15 years ago

That's my hope as well. I can see G+ actually being a productivity enchancer, rather than destroyer like facebook.

YMMV on the non-geek uptake. I have family members in tech who are all over facebook, twitter, linkedin, and whatnot who still haven't signed up for an account on G+, so we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

pnathan• 15 years ago

By the time, I got onto G+, almost all my friends were on there. Yes, we're all geeks.

I'm more than happy to keep it geeky over there!

hook• 15 years ago

Key difference: Facebook has 750 million active users. Google+ has 10 million users.

jojopotato• 15 years ago

Funnily enough, all users on G+ could be considered 30 day actives and probably most of them 7 day actives by virtue of the fact that the service is so young :)

ugh• 15 years ago

That’s not only funny, that’s also why said difference is currently meaningless. The ten million users are also active users. The interesting question will be whether they will still be in a month (or, alternatively, whether Google+ gains so many new users that a few million lost active users don’t matter).

zmmmmm• 15 years ago

It's pretty hard to be a Google+ user at this point and not be considered "active" - unless you disregard signing up as activity. I suppose you could argue a lot of people are signing up and not using the service at all, but my anecdotal observation is entirely the opposite of that. The people who sign up are embracing it in a big way.

ippisl• 15 years ago

I think hangout use statistics would be really interesting. anybody got any idea/estimate about those ?

akshat• 15 years ago

How does this number compare to that of Wave/Buzz? I would not be surprised if Wave/Buzz garnered similar numbers when they were first released.

sahaj• 15 years ago

Probably not. I use Buzz quite a bit and noticed that more of my contacts are using G+ than they did Buzz.

Larry Page On Google+: Over 10 Million Users, 1 Billion Items Shared

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