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Google+ Loses 60% of Active Users
First time accepted submitter tech4 writes "Despite users' curiosity around Google+, it seems like most Google+ users just wanted to see the platform before returning to Facebook. 'Google has lost over 60 per cent of its active users on its social network Google+, according to a report by Chitika Insights, raising questions about how well it is doing against its rival, Facebook. Despite the clear interest in an alternative to Facebook, it does not appear that the people joining are staying around and actively using the web site. Google's problem is not getting users in the first place, it seems, but rather keeping them after they have arrived. For now it appears that a lot of users are merely curious about Google+, but return to the tried and tested format of Facebook when the lustre fades. The problem is that Facebook is not going to rest on its laurels while Google attempts to get the advantage. Already it has added features inspired by Google+, particularly in terms of improving the transparency of its privacy options.'"
Well whenever there is something new people try it out and realize it isn't like what they are use to and go back to the old way. Confident that they are not a close minded individual.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's that simple. The value of a social network lies in having all your friends on it too, and that's true for Facebook but it isn't true for G+. Also, Facebook has the games people want to play, while G+ doesn't, so there just isn't much to attract anybody to G+ other than curiosity.
The biggest problem is that those of us who want to move to Google+ can't convince enough of our less techy friends to move over. People go where people are. It isn't the best tech that wins but the largest market share. Had Google launched Plus before "everyone and their grandmother" were on Facebook, they would have had a shot, but it's sort of too late.
Google+ is "primarily an identity service."
--Eric Schmidt
I have no need for an identity service in my life. That's why I left.
Gee, why wouldn't draconian policies, a confusingly half-baked interface and long load times be the path to a successful website?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Social networks tend to accumulate momentum, and fairly slowly. Facebook has a ton of it right now, and Google+ has very little. It's not just in number of users, but in the habits of those users. People are used to Facebook. It'll probably take a year or so for Google+ to start taking off. And you don't really "lose" users, once signed up people always have the option of returning, especially with most of those people already having Gmail accounts.
Also, many people were probably scared off by all the FUD surrounding the pseudonym issue. Once people calm down over that, usage will most likely rise. In any case, we won't know if G+ will succeed or not for at least a year, I would say. Anyone who thought Facebook would be abandoned overnight really needs to learn how the Internet works. It is fickle, yes, but it also has huge inertia, because of the number of people involved.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Gmail was very successful with it's invitation system: it was elitist, and everyone ached to get in. But putting an invitation system into G+ was devastating. If the objective of a Social Network is to get in touch with everyone at any time, it's a very idiot move to restrict the creation of new accounts for no reason. They basically released a product that was useless, because they made sure there would be nobody to communicate with.
This could be understandable if it was their first shot at social networking; but Wave had the same problem and they did not learn from it.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
But in the end, I quit just like I did with Facebook a year ago. Social Networking is fucking boring when the people being the most social are retards.
Many of the early adopters out there are Google Apps users, and yet we still can't use our Google Apps accounts with Google+. I've heard many good things about Google+ but am still waiting for Google to allow me to use it.
And I'm not interested in managing yet another account just to try out Google+.
How many active users does Facebook have? 12%? They have 800'000'000 accounts, congratulations... While actual user count is below 200'000'000.
Only 200 million at most... what a dismal failure.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Is this another "study" that doesn't include any clicks to the service from the black Google bar, or from within the service itself, or from mobile devices, or based on counting only public posts? Meh. Next.
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My friends and I joined G+ rather quickly upon its inception. We started having fun on it. It was great.
Then some of our accounts started getting suspended because of violations of a questionable "names policy". The policy said to use the name that people know you by, and those are the names we all used. Apparently that wasn't good enough for Google, though; they suspended accounts anyway, even some with "real looking" Western style names. Once enough people got suspended, the remaining batch of folks that didn't got pissed off that their friends were kicked off the service, and they left voluntarily.
Their name policy was unclear, and people would even get their names approved only to get suspended again later on by a different overzealous admin. It was chaos.
I think the lesson to be learned here is don't alienate your users, ESPECIALLY early adopters. We can make or break a social network.
Facebook may require real names, but at least they were absolutely clear about this from the start. They were not wishy-washy, and didn't mass-suspend new accounts like G+ did.
The biggest problem Google+ has right now is how they have been dragging the ball on commercial accounts, meanwhile enforcing the real-name policy. It is an incredibly braindead move because you are effectively locking all companies out of participating on Google+, and thus they are unable to bring any users over with them.
A follow a lot of brands on twitter and simply can not do the same on G+. If everyone I followed on Twitter existed on G+ I probably would not use Twitter anymore, but sadly Google is ACTIVELY PREVENTING that from being the case due to this braindead policy enforcement.
I'd stick to Google+ instead of Facebook if I could read and respond to Facebook from Google+.
As it stands, nobody is active on Google+, so you go to Facebook to read everything and if you want to be active on Google+ you are essentially doing twice the work, three times the work if you are active on Twitter, which seems to have some kind of cross-posting feature for Facebook.
What methodology is this company using to measure activity on Google+? If it's public posts, they may have a serious systemic problem: people who use G+ specifically because it's so easy to not post publicly. My guess is the majority of G+ users are posting only to their circles, in which case there'd be a plethora of stuff that Chitika Insights simply won't see.
news flash: Facebook's published numbers are always active users.
With "active users" including those who have tried to deactivate their account but failed, because just accessing a site that sends your cookie to Facebook will stop the two week deactivation counter before they actually deactivate it.
It's harder to opt out of Facebook than it is to opt out of the Catholic Church. At least the RCC strikes you from their records when you die.
Google+ had its numbers go up by 1200% upon opening to the public. Of those new users, 40% stuck around, for a net increase of 480%. Slashdot's headline? "Google+ user base down 60%! It must be dying!" I've seen powerdrills with less spin.
This is what happened for many people:
Google+ had a restricted/limited test phase, but the public thought they might get to be part of it. The public is already on facebook.
-The public tried to get in, only to be told "you're not invited yet.. go dig around for a while in your friends to see if one of them can invite you"
-The public then either tried really hard to find someone to invite them, only to discover nobody else is on G+ because of the limited entry... or they never got into the 'club' and said "Meh, this isn't worth my effort, I'm already of facebook and all my friends are there anyway".
One should note that the shift from myspace to facebook was largely due to how myspace mismanaged its changes/upgrades and became a horrid, error-prone, piece of crap full of spam, fake accounts, and outright trashy implementation. And while facebook is beginning to make those same mistakes, it is not nearly as bad and the difference between facebook and G+ is minimal.
I'm on G+, and I would use it if I had friends on there. Nobody uses it because it was hard to get into, and so I don't use it but maybe once a month, only to find that hardly anything has been posted there. And the friends I do have on G+, just like me, are waiting for the big exodus from FB to occur, while keeping their primary foot still on FB territory.
FB will have to make a bigtime mistake to drive people away, or G+ will have to make a bigtime promotional drive to get people in (and not make the mistake of acting like its a secret club and blocking entry... if your servers can't handle everyone, then don't hope everyone comes or upgrade your server dedication)
No, the remaining 40% are people who don't mind that Google has created a platform that exchanges privacy for profit as a matter of design and policy, but prefer a different structure than Facebook offers.
If Google+ allowed anonymous use then I would be on it, as would a fair number of others I know. As it stands, it's just another attempt at Facebook; the TOS are odious, pretty much following in Facebook's footsteps. Google+ users are most likely talking to each other, if they're talking at all.
Perhaps someday someone will implement a reliable and innovative social platform that allows users to opt-in, or not, to exposing personal information to the company running the show and/or others. That would be something I'd be happy to get behind. Without such a policy, people joining who require privacy put themselves at risk to uncontrolled exposure at the hands of the company running the site, its advertisers, and so forth. This in turn can empower malicious individuals, providing access where it was previously prevented. Problems can range from stalkers to politically- and speech-based harassment and so on.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
For those of us using Google Apps, there's still no way to use Google+ without registering for a Gmail address. For me, this is a non-starter. Considering many people use Google Apps for email and other Google services on a personal domain, one could assume some of Google's biggest fans use Google Apps. It really doesn't make sense that Google still shuts them out of Google+, considering how hard they're pushing it.
Once they get Google Apps accounts working on Google+, I'll happily try it out (and probably stick with it from what I've heard). But until then, I'm not going to make a Gmail account just for Google+.
At least Google doesn't make make your private info public, like FB loves to do.
That would be a Buzz kill.
You can't take the sky from me...
What the linkbait summary failed to mention is that the drop was down from a spike of 1200%. I follow a few friends and a lot of tech pundits, and I'm never short of interesting conversations.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?