Google+'s Numbers Aren't as Impressive as Everyone Thinks

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2011/07/google-s-numbers-arent-as-impressive-as-everyone-thinks/242375/

by llambda • 15 years ago

2 2 15 years ago

"Google+ making it nearly impossible to import Facebook friends"

Uhh... no. Try "Facebook making it nearly impossible to export your friends". How could it possibly benefit Google for them to make it hard to import your friends?

Did the author even think before writing this?

tbh2347• 15 years ago

Nice to see some objective reporting here - goes ahead to call Paul Allen "clearly a Google+ fanboy" and tries to relate 750 million to 1 billion.

"[I]s it as big a deal as people are making it out to be? Yes, Google+ might end up being the fastest growing website of all time, but Facebook and Twitter primed the pump."

"[U]nless you're counting Friendster and MySpace and all of those other networks that have since failed, Facebook is the pioneer in social networking; it's slower growth is understandable. The fact that it grew as fast as it did, actually, is kind of unbelievable."

First, we're just going to ignore companies that fail now? Hindsight is 20/20, MySpace was a huge competitor at the time. More importantly, I don't really see how having existing competitors in a space IMPROVES your chances of adoption. Google+ isn't "that newfangled social networking thing", it's that "new Facebook thing," and if anything the adoption effect is reversed.

What I don't get is this author's apparent agenda against Google+ - he even says "No matter how you measure it, 20 million or so visitors is a lot of visitors." so the article is really about downplaying how important 20 million is. I'm all for criticizing Google+, and it'll be interesting to see if the same exponential growth associated with social networks will occur when there's a big existing competitor. Let's just find more important things to criticize?

Google+'s Numbers Aren't as Impressive as Everyone Thinks

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