Google+ Is Outpacing Twitter

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-plus-is-outpacing-twitter-2013-5

by talhof8 • 13 years ago

45 47 13 years ago

volta1• 13 years ago

Comical headline.

The only feature of Google+ that is really interesting to me is hangouts. That is a social thing that I use at work almost every day, but it doesn't really fit the traditional social network model, and it doesn't help Google make advertising money.

mcescalante• 13 years ago

Sounds to me like it's a prime candidate for some of Google's famed "spring cleaning" in the coming years...

andrewljohnson• 13 years ago

That would be fine, and Google should still be lauded. Hangout started a whole cottage industry, and also nudged existing video chat vendors to adopt Hangout like functionality. If Google shut down Hangout, I would miss how reliable and high-quality it is compared to Skype, but there are a couple good alternatives now.

jff• 13 years ago

Can we just fuck right off with the whining about Reader at this point?

prostoalex• 13 years ago

Same here, for any N-way conference call it's easier to jump into hangout. We use it extensively at work, can't speak for other Google+ features.

vor_• 13 years ago

This has been explained before. Google+ numbers can be misleading because they're tied to other services. The article mentions this:

"The reasons behind Google Plus's growth -- it now can boast 359 million active users, up 33 percent from 269 million users at the end of June 2012, according to GlobalWebIndex -- are complex and tied to Google's effort to build a connecting layer across all its services, including search, YouTube, maps and other products. Log into one, and you've logged into the lot."

adventured2• 13 years ago

And Twitter's numbers are extraordinarily misleading, because so many of their accounts are fake, and so many people just sign up but never really use the service.

fizx• 13 years ago

The numbers you see externally are the same as the ones used internally to reason about growth, and a great deal of care has been taken to keep them accurate. Fake accounts are culled, and inactives or likely spammers aren't counted in the numbers.

notatoad• 13 years ago

it's been explained, but does it matter? Google+ has been referred to by google as a unified social layer spanning all their products. it's not just the part that looks like facebook that not many people seem to use. I very much doubt that google cares if you use their product or facebook or twitter to share what you had for breakfast this morning: being able to keep up with your friends is what social networks give you in exchange for you informing them of your social connections. The value for google is the user account you create and the social interaction graph data they collect across all their services. a comment made through your google+ account on your friend's youtube video or blogger blog is just as valuable as a comment left on their google+ page. it's the interaction that matters.

bigdubs• 13 years ago

... that has no active users.

blappu2• 13 years ago

Why doesn't Google just provide a tool to import a user's full Facebook data into Google+ with a single click?

They could even do it without the user's consent for people using Chrome or Android, or they could pay people to do so (it might cost them 10 billions, but it would be quite a good "company" to "acquire").

Without doing that, or having some killer feature, there's no way that they will take off.

ceejayoz2• 13 years ago

Facebook has a long history of disabling that sort of system.

blappu2• 13 years ago

Uh? That's impossible to do.

Facebook already provides a way to download all your data, so Google just needs to write software that uses it and uploads it into Google+.

Alternatively, they can just automatically scrape the Facebook website via HTTP directly from the user's machine (using a modified Chrome, modified Android, desktop tool or Android app).

freehunter• 13 years ago

There is a Chrome plugin that will move all your Facebook photo albums to Picasa and Google+. I used it when I got my Google+ account.

Felix21• 13 years ago

What you mean is: Millions of people activated G+ so they can use Youtube and other Google services without Google getting in their face every 2 seconds to activate g+

edwardunknown2• 13 years ago

So you're saying they're discovered a way to spend money maintaining a huge community that nobody actually uses!

Quick, give that CEO another bonus!

mindcrime• 13 years ago

To say that "nobody uses" G+ is ridiculous. I don't even have that many people in my circles and I see a pretty non-stop stream of activity flowing through. Somebody is darn sure using it.

Is G+ as active as Twitter? Hell, I don't know, but it's definitely - as another commenter here just said - not a "ghost town".

workbench• 13 years ago

not surprising when you converted all YouTubes profiles to G+ Profiles this month

w1ntermute2• 13 years ago

As of late, I've been seeing more and more people active on G+. It's been quite a surprise, but I think the network is starting to pick up steam.

Sarkie• 13 years ago

I love it, I use Twitter, I used Facebook. Circles just does it for me.

I care about these people today, I want to follow circle XYZ, I want to share this to Mates, Nerds, Android, etc.

The Photo Albums is amazing and linked up with Instant Upload from my phone at full res when charging on a WiFi.

I really like Google+ and wish it had come out before Twitter/Facebook.

rweba• 13 years ago

A lot of skeptics here (as usual!)

Well I use both Google+ and Facebook every day and to me Google+ seems VERY active with a lot of high quality content as well.

I can't really say if it is more active than Twitter (which is also very active of course) but it certainly doesn't seem like "a ghost town" as some people try to claim.

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

I think Google+ has more active focussed communities of people using it (photographers, geeks) whereas Twitter has a wider variety of content.

nati• 13 years ago

facebook is getting worse day by day and google+ is really about high quality content

buster• 13 years ago

Well, i hope so. I still don't get the value of twitter, it always seemed to me as overrated. Why 140 characters? External services for photo upload? I still don't get it..

How is [1] better then [2]?!

[1] http://www.imagebanana.com/view/okt9mdpq/obamatwitter.png [2] http://www.imagebanana.com/view/ma3vuvby/obamagooglep.png

I hope i don't start a religious war now, just saying although i have a twitter account i never really got to use it...

edit: changed screenshots to english versions

muuh-gnu• 13 years ago

> Why 140 characters?

Historical. Twitter started out as a web-sms gateway.

> I still don't get the value of twitter

The value is in social capital. Important people post there exclusively.

> How is [1] better then [2]?!

It isnt. But [2] came to the scene after [1] so [1] has a bigger momentum. Being slightly better does not mean everybody suddenly will switch. The perceived improvement has to be bigger than the cost of switching.

glenra• 13 years ago

> I still don't get the value of twitter

"Talk directly to semi-famous people" is one of the chief value propositions.

Suppose you are a fan of some public figure - say, an actor or a politician who has more than thousands of fan - snd you want to ask that person a question or give them a compliment.

If they're on twitter, there is a pretty good chance you could get through and have that person actually read what you have to say. If you're sufficiently witty and relevant it might even turn into a conversation. There is no other medium for which your chance of getting through is that large, and part of the reason why this is true is due to that 140-character limit.

Consider the unread messages in your email inbox. Any single email you open might turn out to be a quick topical one-liner, carefully edited to make a single point clearly and say nothing extraneous...but it's much more likely to be rambling and poorly edited. In the worst case, it could take an hour to read and understand a single email. So sorting through email (or any other non-bounded message stream) is daunting and best delegated to somebody else if you get too much of it.

The fact that tweets have to be so short forces tweeters to think carefully about what they want to say and to make their point quickly. If the message is a compliment or comment, it has to be an efficient one. If it's a question, it's an efficient question - you don't have to skim past a page of introductions and compliments and caveats to find it. And if the text is ugly or pointless or hateful, you can "block" the sender after you see a mere 140 characters of what he has to say.

So that's one use case - talking directly to people who otherwise would be protected by a circle of PR flacks. You can currently do that more effectively on twitter than most other services.

Even when talking to non-famous people, the 140-character limit imposes discipline that can make conversations more fun and efficient, but it only makes sense if some critical mass of the sort of people you like to talk to and hear from are already on the service, so it might not make sense for you yet. That's essentially a bootstrapping problem.

habosa• 13 years ago

I know the numbers are inflated due to tie-in with other Google services, but I'm very optimistic about Google+ long term.

I got my invite in the first wave and pretty much immediately ditched the service. I just didn't see why I'd use it. I am a light Facebook user and I don't Tweet.

Recently I decided to give G+ another try and I love what I am seeing. First of all, the site is a pleasure to use and the mobile app is by far best in class. Second, I think G+ is absolutely the best social network for those who are interested in following people outside of their friends. Celebrities on Facebook have something to sell, and on Twitter there's not enough room, but on G+ I get long, interesting posts from famous people around the world.

I only have a few friends on G+ but I am starting to check it more and more and I can say without a doubt that if it ever hits critical mass I'll be the first to drop Facebook. Google simply has the latecomer's advantage, they got to watch Facebook stumble and build around those obstacles at their own pace.

Also, Google+ sign-in is a great developer product. The deep-linking concept is a very interesting implementation of sharing for mobile apps that borrows from Android's intent system.

edwardunknown2• 13 years ago

Google+ will be a fine replacement for Facebook when everybody gets the signal that FB has entered it's Newscorp-era Myspace phase. But there's another possibility: Facebook may end up leaving such a bad taste in people's mouths that it will be replaced by nothing. Both G+ and FB may fade away as the world collectively says "fuck this".

You might say I'm a dreamer.

cantankerous3• 13 years ago

It makes sense that G+ could outlive Facebook if only because it's so tightly integrated with a suite of products that are so widely used, where Facebook's primary external integration is through apps that aren't essential to the day-in-day out...at least not yet.

I think Facebook has become to tightly woven into peoples' lives, though, that it's going to live on for quite some time. It all really depends on where the kids decide to go, methinks..

mvkel• 13 years ago

Define "outpace"

In terms of sharing popularity, printing out a webpage is 100X more popular than Google+: http://karmcity.com/post/49275229257/the-value-of-share-butt...

oneandoneis2• 13 years ago

Facebook's where I go for social stuff. Twitter's largely replaced RSS. Google+ has two uses:

# It's where my Androids upload to

# It's where I get tech news - Linus, Greg KH, O'Reilly, etc. all post on G+

I tend to hope G+ doesn't become as popular as Facebook with the general public, because right now it's got a really good signal:noise ratio and I'd hate to see it drown in Farmville updates and cat photos..

dbrian• 13 years ago

Just group people in circles and read the one you want.

iamwil• 13 years ago

This is a bit of a open secret. I think many in tech think Google+ is a ghost town, and so the joke goes, the only people that use it are Google employees.

However, when I was looking around for 3D printer communities, I was surprised that there was a vibrant one on G+. While one data point is not evidence, it is an example that runs counter to the current prevailing tech wisdom that nothing happens on G+.

I think while G+ may not replace FB, the interface is great, and we may find social networks have other uses for groups besides what we do on FB.

guylhem• 13 years ago

If I was to badmouth Google after reading the article, and especially their tactic of tying-in the experience, and using youtube and google ranking to induce people to open and use a google plus account, I'd say they are leveraging their existing monopolies to acquire another monopoly in a separated industry.

Naysayers would say that's an emotional response, but I would then let monopoly be defined by known indexes such as the HI and leave the conclusion to arithmetic instead of emotions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl_index

I haven't done the calculation, but we may find interesting results - and I say that while I think google + is being turned into a nice product, with useless cruft being removed little by little, and some polish added. IMHO only the legality of their tactic is troubling - the product is becoming good.

But would it have if they hadn't played dirty?

I guess it's legal if you are not getting caught.

badclient• 13 years ago

If google+ was doing so well, Google Corp wouldn't be scared shitless to talk about engagement.

Google+ is honestly more of a rebranding of google than a new service. It is Google relabeling parts of popular products like Gmail and calling it Google+.

Google+ Is Outpacing Twitter

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