Larry Page: Google+ now has 90 million users globally

http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/01/19/larry-page-google-now-has-90-million-users/

by MRonney • 15 years ago

99 52 15 years ago

luckyisgood3• 15 years ago

Google+ will be successful because it attracts meaningful conversations and motivated users. It took the best from Twitter and Facebook and added its own flair, making it the most contagious, fun and informative social network I have ever participated in.

creativityland6• 15 years ago

Not sure if sarcasm, or being serious.

luckyisgood3• 15 years ago

Me? Serious.

joejohnson• 15 years ago

I know, it's just genius what they did with Google+. It's the best social network ever!

potater3• 15 years ago

True that, particularly on the meaningful conversation side of things. Like many, I initially approached G+ as a kind of Facebook. I focused on basically friends, coworkers, acquaintances - personal relationships developed through assorted means. That was neat in having a replacement for my Facebook account, but I kept on hearing about noteworthy commentary being posted via links to G+ on hn, reddit, etc so I started exploring with new non-friend circles.

After branching out to my immediate interest areas (tech), a little later I ended up adding Philip Plait (bad astronomy guy), Fraser Cain and other sciencey/astronomy folks. The amazing Hangouts that these folks do a number of times/week makes me feel really lucky to have access to such a resource. Certainly having some degree of access to experts in assorted fields is nothing new thanks to the internets, but G+ has, in my view, made such interactions far more accessible.

I can only imagine that there are other groups doing awesome things with G+ who I have not yet found.

luckyisgood3• 15 years ago

The photographers seem to be having a strong community on G+ and G+ is the place where us amateurs can be exposed to their awesomeness. And talented those people are.

In the last few months, I have noticed many HN posts linking to Google+ posts. G+ is becoming a strong blogging platform and because Google is pushing rel=author so hard, soon it won't matter WHERE you wrote it (domain), it will matter WHO wrote it (author). That's why I see A+ bloggers adopting G+ soon.

creativityland6• 15 years ago

I haven't seen a single Google+ link yet on the more popular subreddits, where did you find them?

turing• 15 years ago

Listening to the earnings call. Did Larry just say that 60% of members use the service daily, with 80% engaging at least once a week? Wow.

EwanToo• 15 years ago

How many are "engaging" by doing a Google search while logged in, and seeing a Google+ result?

Maybe I'm just getting cynical..

waterlesscloud• 15 years ago

I'm very very skeptical of that number.

Perhaps the people I know are just atypical (non)users, but I sort of doubt it.

gtzi• 15 years ago

Question is, how many out of them actually use it.

resnamen• 15 years ago

RTFA: "Google’s Larry Page has announced that Google+ now has 90 million users globally, doubling the number from three months ago. Page also said that G+ has a 60% ‘daily engagement’ rate. This came as a part of Google’s Q4 and fiscal year 2011 financial reports."

creativityland6• 15 years ago

60% daily engagement rate including Google personalized search? ;)

xxbondsxx• 15 years ago

I'd be interested to see what they define as "daily engagement," for it's a fairly ambiguous term. Clicking on a personalized result in Google search is far different than actively going to the G+ home page and engaging in a conversation. Likewise, starting a hangout is far different than merely +1-ing a foreign page on the internet.

Although all of these actions interact with G+, only few are true metrics of social network success. The key is to drive _social_ interaction, to be the #1 resource of where you friends and family interact. I think G+ still has a wall to climb in that sense.

Let's not forget their average visit length:

http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/6a00d83451b36c69e...

I have a lot of hope for G+ but this reminds me of the premature "Mission Accomplished" banner.

loceng• 15 years ago

Similar questions should be raised regarding all other companies boasting their engagement rates. Hit a site with Facebook widhets and comments? Do they consider that engagement? shrug

jdp23• 15 years ago

agreed.

do you happen to have a link for the article that graphic comes from? thanks!

mladenkovacevic• 15 years ago

I don't doubt that 60% of people use it daily. I personally click on that +Mladen button a couple of times a day at least. But I'm not so sure that they are using it in the same way as Facebook or Twitter.. that is to say for personal communication with their friends.

None of my friends are on Google+. But there are tons of really smart people that I don't know personally (although I wish I did), who post lots of great content for me to read, and consider and discuss. With this personal experience in mind, I believe the 60% are using it as a content discovery platform, not so much as a social network.. sort of like another Reddit/Twitter

creativityland6• 15 years ago

Agreed. I think the user base will continue to grow, mainly because more and more websites are adding the G+ button to get any advantage they can in SEO rankings, and that alone will fuel the growth over the next few months.

However I'm not sure how most users will feel about associating their online activity/searches with their social network.

MatthewPhillips• 15 years ago

Agreed. Pinterest, on the other hand, has the best "regular people" adoption I've seen since Facebook.

_exec• 15 years ago

Looks interesting..got an invite?

ajross3• 15 years ago

That sounds about right to me. Though obviously there's a spectrum there. One assumes Google's hope is that as the adoption grows, the "None of my friends are on" problem will progressively disappear. When some of your friends are on G+, you'll start posting stuff there. And until then it's a cool way to learn about the restaurants frequented by Lennart Poettering.

kingkawn• 15 years ago

When it first launched all of my friends joined and began to post, including the many without facebook accounts due to tight gmail integration. But within a month or two almost all of them stopped posting. Whether they will come back is the question, a profoundly different one than whether they will join at all.

jvm• 15 years ago

I suspect this is Google's intention, at least for now. It's basically fancy twitter. It doesn't have much in the way of personal communication mechanisms (although huddle was weird and I'm not sure why they thought anybody would use it).

Aloisius2• 15 years ago

I'm shocked, just shocked by the speed of Google+ adoption.

Who knew that leveraging a near monopoly by bundling your product could give you access to a new market?

forgotusername• 15 years ago

I'm almost surprised the number is so low, given how difficult it is to log into a Google Account and even run a web search without accidentally stumbling onto one of the prolific set of lead-ins it has now.

pork• 15 years ago

This will most likely continue to happen in the form of tighter integrations, continually boosting the engagement number, until an antitrust lawsuit causes G+ to split off into it's own company. I suppose the bet is that by then, there will be enough momentum for network effects to take care of the rest. Like Google+ or not, it's a pretty nifty, calculated strategy.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

Google search has about 1 billion visitors per month. Turning 9% of them into Google+ users in 6 months is not too bad.

Steko• 15 years ago

I wonder which product is really driving G+ adoption. If Google+ is opted in by default on Android now* that would account for almost all of the growth in G+.

* I think this is the case with ICS, less sure if it's the case for the Gingerbread phones that form the vast majority of Android devices sold.

Aloisius2• 15 years ago

Have you done a search on google for "facebook" recently while in a private browsing session?

On the right there is "People and Pages on Google+ related to facebook" acting like a gigantic advertisement for Google+.

Given how many people type searches into Google instead of typing in the URL, it doesn't shock me that Google has managed to convert so many people..

fuzzix• 15 years ago

"If Google+ is opted in by default on Android now...

...I think this is the case with ICS"

A Google+ account is created from any account I use to log into ICS? Have you a link which confirms this?

I use a pseudonymous account on my Android phone.

j452• 15 years ago

Oh, snap. The reported death(s) of G+ seem to be greatly exaggerated.

I know some folks are saying there's a lot of fake accounts on G+ but I think that's true for the same percentage, if not more across all social networks.

j452• 15 years ago

So, downvoters, was it anything I said? :)

Hominem• 15 years ago

I'm really starting to like G+. I added the HN circle so now my stream is full of tech stuff. I may never even add personal friends, just let all the baby talk stay on Facebook.

creativityland6• 15 years ago

Yes, but it is all relevant to who your friends are on Facebook. Maybe time to remove some friends on FB? ;)

My stream on fb is fairly informative and useful.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

A few more months and it will probably surpass Twitter. How many users does Twitter have about now? 120 million?

ken• 15 years ago

According to Wolfram Alpha, 200 million.

badclient• 15 years ago

If Google launched a web-based Notepad clone and pushed it like they push Google+, it'd probably get just as many users. More importantly, the users might actually find the app useful.

mathattack• 15 years ago

I view it as a non-entity and I am a large user of social networks. I spent 30 minutes building circles and gave up when nobody posted. It doesn't add enough to be useful. Its not Friendster yet, but....

wbkang• 15 years ago

from http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/google-claims-90...:

(UPDATE: We've confirmed what some readers suspected: the 60 and 80 percent figures refer to users accessing any Google service—whether it be search, Gmail or something else—while logged in to their Google account, and do not necessarily indicate actual usage of Google+ each day or week. The 90 million figure refers not to active users, but to the total number of people who have created Google+ accounts.)

dotcoma• 15 years ago

Remember the times when Google didn't have to brag about the small stuff?

Larry Page: Google+ now has 90 million users globally

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