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Facebook Says That Google+ Has No Users
dkd903 noticed another amusing shot in the battle between G+ and Facebook. CNN is running a story where Facebook's director of game partnership Sean Ryan basically says Google+ has no users. The article is mostly about casual gaming on social platforms, which I am really sick of individually blocking.
He is quite correct. I have a Facebook account and several of my friends who wanted to see it also do.. but it's empty. There's nothing happening there. This interesting article also says the same - there is nothing happening in Google+, while people just use Facebook like before. It also points out that the circles by design make Google+ less social "social network" by greatly limiting what people share and see.
I don't see it changing anytime soon either. Google+ misses all those things that make social network social. There's no pages either. I've noticed Facebook works nicely as some kind of a rss reader if you join the pages that interest you. Besides, I'm not quite comfortable with Google's datamining. They already have my searches, youtube views, analytics from everywhere of the internet..
There are no companies (users in Facebook speak) actively mining your content on Google+.
From the "thank you Captain Obvious" department, something that's in an invite-only beta practically has no users. Really? How did you ever get THAT idea?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
The service that hasn't actually officially opened yet to the public has no users? I, for one, am shocked. Absolutely shocked. It's invite only, for crying out loud, shut up already. Let's just wait and see what happens when they actually release the damn thing. You can't say it's dead and you can't say it's going to kill Facebook because IT HAS NOT EVEN BEEN OPENED FOR PUBLIC REGISTRATION YET. Good lord, people. Let's all take a step back for a second, take a deep breathe, and give it a little time before you make your baseless predictions.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Isn't no Farmville spam the entire selling point of Google+? Everybody I know using it is there precisely because it's NOT Facebook and doesn't have all the annoying spam (and even more annoying emo users) that make Facebook a wasteland of human stupidity.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
They added the games to Google+ a few days ago. So far, not too bad. Hopefully they don't go the route of Facebook.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Google+ has no users, but Facebook has no users worth talking to.
I think I'll take Google+ if I'm forced to choose one.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Google+'s biggest strength is that it puts circles front-and-center so that you can control who sees your posts on a per-post basis. Yes you can do the same in Facebook, but it is a tedious workflow in Facebook.
I am starting to think this may be Google+'s biggest weakness as well. Now that people can share posts with sub-sets of their friends list with ease, Google+ overall feels less active. I wonder how much of that feeling of inactivity has to do with not being aware of private, walled off conversations between members of your circles. Honestly, how many close friends do you have on Facebook or Google+? It is more than likely that the bulk of your friends lists / circles are acquaintances or friends of friends and those are the people that you are less likely to share posts with ... and vice-versa.
It's sad watching people argue over which advertising conglomerate they want to give all their personal information to.
I use FB Purity. Awesome.
http://www.fbpurity.com/
That and a couple other tweaks in FF makes FB a reasonably enjoyable experience.
My other sig is a Porsche!
he is correct. The Hitchhikers Guide shows us there is no mone, no people, no sex and therfore no users.
Ascii artist &
Everyone who's ever intensively played a 'social game' on Facebook knows the simple truth: they're surrounded by fake accounts. For over two years I managed in excess of 40 Facebook accounts without ever being flagged... I presumed most of my 'friends' were fake as well. Even now the accounts are just sitting there, untouched, unused, but inflating FB's user numbers.
I recognize I was cheating. It was wrong and I shouldn't have done it. For my actions, I've chosen to exile myself from FB games altogether. Certainly, not everyone cheats or creates multiple accounts as I did. But I venture that enough 'gamers' do it to seriously distort Facebook's numbers.
Google+, if you don't see your friends posting often, their talking about you.
Facebooks the most hated company on the internet... proven by several polls now. Their on their way out. If Google acted anything like Microsoft does, Facebook would have been dead years ago. It's only a matter of time.
Or maybe there is?
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google/id447119634?mt=8
I don't get why Google feels the need to come up with G+ and compete with Facebook. Stick to fscking search, stick to what you're best at. I don't understand this Microsoft mentality of "Oh, we didn't have this first and make money with it? Lets do one of our own! And fire the people in charge of marketing and precognition. They should have known social networking would become such a huge hit."
The problem is that Facebook is basically becoming a walled garden service for many Internet users now. Message/mail service, chat, blogging, location, games, photo albums, business info, etc - there are a lot of people who use it almost exclusively. And that walled garden experience means Facebook has 100% control over the ads people see.
Google is not a search company, they are an advertising company. Everything they do eventually goes back to serving ads to people as efficiently and accurately as possible; it makes up almost all of their revenue. Search is the largest traffic draw for that, but Gmail, Google Maps, Android apps/store, and everything else they do serve the same goal. If Google lets Facebook take over the majority of Internet users' time online, it doesn't matter what services they offer, no one will see them or the ads they serve.
FB Purity uses your browser to implement a whitelist of applications that get to your feed, so even as new games are "released" (usually in the case of Zynga, poorly reimplemented or bought) you won't see their spam unless you specifically allow them.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
And Google has no GOO! or GLE fo that matter. So there!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
It sounds like all you need is two circles to duplicate your facebook experience.
I have family
friends
dnd
acquaintances .
a couple private groups
I don't go overboard but I could see how you could overdo it.
On facebook, everything was mashed together. It caused me stress and embarassment occasionally.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's users have no privacy, no real opt-out, no right to it's own content.
Scientia est Potentia
they have plenty of users. not a day goes by where im not reminded through email about these users...some of whom ive gone so far as to call 'friends' in the past, in something called 'real life,' before their google+ email campaign began.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I use google+ and I don't have a facebook account. It is slowly replacing twitter for me. I love it. I have about 50 people in my circles.
You mean like Google Wave?
Why would facebook lie about it? Anyway, if there's a lack of user maybe it's about time to open it to the public, I've been like one month waiting for it and haven't got a way to get a damn invite (all the people I know use only facebook, or that spanish rip-off called twenti which is even worse).
Can we please get an objective article on these issues from time to time?,earlier today we got what was essentially a corporate ad praising Android's African success and now we get the flipside with some Facebook PR guy defending his home turf.
G+ is nowhere near close to being a threat to Facebook yet, we know that, but it does have 25 million registered users in what is essentially a closed beta test.
Predictions this early are useless and will all but reflect individual bias, preferences and loyalties. If you feel like it. you can look at past precedents like Gmail (hit) or Wave (miss) and get a slight idea of where things are going; a Facebook exec is the last person I'd trust to tell me how Google+ is doing.