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Users Spend More Time On Myspace Than Google+

pigrabbitbear writes "Google is boasting that more than 90 million people have signed up for its Google+. Those are pretty impressive numbers. I mean, if you had 90 million people at your disposal, you could do anything. You'd rule the Internet. Except there's one little problem: No one is using the site. The Wall Street Journal has the hard, unfiltered truth: According to comScore numbers, users spent an average of 3 minutes on G+ in the entire month of January. Facebook users spent 405 minutes, or nearly 7 hours, on the site. People managed to find 17 minutes to spare to add connections on LinkedIn. Heck, even Myspace users — many of whom are probably ghost accounts — surfed for eight minutes over the month."

11 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. No reason to use it? by Immostlyharmless · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Simple reason is that facebook is already a working hub for all of my friends, there are those who have switched to google plus, but as long as all my friends, all my co-workers and all of my family, is already in one place? Why go someplace else? Google needs to blow some capital to get people to move. Offer incentives to switch, that's how business works.

    1. Re:No reason to use it? by Riceballsan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually i think the myspace stagnation isn't quite as true as people think. Facebook overtook myspace, because they competed in a different arena and gathered a different crowd. Facebook timed it so that they didn't have to focus on converting myspace's X million users, they grabbed a few million people that did not use social networking and pulled them in first, then once facebooks userbase outgrew myspace, then they got people to switch.

    2. Re:No reason to use it? by formfeed · · Score: 4, Insightful

      \ G+ seems to be going another direction into something like world wide/online/hobby clubs...

      That would be a nice reason to use it. But my dirty little secret: My real name isn't formfeed

      If you're in high school your teachers don't need to know that you are preparing for the zombie apocalypse. And if you're a teacher, the parents shouldn't be able to find out that your favorite sport is tethercat.

      And there are a million more reasons I don't need an identity services or want my hobbies connected to my CV

  2. nice. by jzuccaro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nice, now get rid of it and return the + operator to the search engine please.

  3. Re:LOL ... by Riceballsan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seconded here. There is 1/8th as much content on my G+ then there ever was on facebook. However that 1/8th is actually things that I either find amusing, actual posts by the friends I give a darn about (compared to 80% of my facebook contacts... which were mostly people I barely knew in person that looked me up and added me, and it was less work to add them then to explain why I don't want to add someone.

  4. Re:LOL ... by FooAtWFU · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google and Facebook are more about renting your personal information - as in, here, let us send this ad to someone whose personal information matches your desired profile. No way they're going to sell their core business. :)

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  5. Sorry, we were busy on G+ by Kamiza+Ikioi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sorry, we were too busy on G+ to worry about first post....

    "The Wall Street Journal has the hard, unfiltered truth"

    Yeah, except it doesn't count mobile users. G+ is mostly cutting edge geeks who are using the app at least as much as the website. It doesn't define which users it is counting. Is this counting active users, signed up and never returned users, who? Considering anyone with a Google account now has a G+ account, the numbers can easily be far off what the active user numbers would be. If they were testing me, and testing mobile, I'd easily clock in about 8 hours average a day (always checking on phone, commenting in discussions, on tablet, on at work, etc.)

    Also, many of us geeks got family to join. We all but boycott Facebook, so they have to log in every once in a while just to check on us, but never interact.

    From personal experience, I have 1000+ followers, follow 200+, and it take me more than 3 minutes a day just to get through the first page of posts. Also, I hyper share with G+, because it's people I share interests, not genes, with.

    Compared to Slashdot: I've posted more interesting stories than Slashdot had today. I've read more interesting stories separately as well. I've had better discussions that on Slashdot. Millions of users, only a couple thousand posts per day... Maybe the Slashdot crowd shouldn't be throwing stones. Reading all the blurbs, I could easily fit Slashdot into 3 minutes a day or less.

    Besides, many posted this story before it was on Slashdot. Became old news quick, already fully parsed, dissected, and discussed. Glad to see /. catch up to G+, and then poo-poo it, lol.

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    I8-D
  6. evil and EVIL by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Which brings it all back to the merits of the two services to the end users.

    Well, that's about a zero for G+, by the looks of things. However, FB is unequivocally heavily into negative territory in terms of merit to end users (even attempting to track non-users?). This is one reason why my router blocks all access to all of FB's IP ranges, thus rendering all those "like" buttons polluting other pages utterly harmless. These stupid "like" buttons are shown, but it's actually impressive or astonishing how much other stuff around the web is replaced by "denied" messages by the router.

    I've an open mind about Google, but Facebook is definitely at the wrong end of the good-evil axis.

    --
    Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
  7. Re:LOL ... by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google+ is just not the same as Facebook and never will be. People don't go there as part of a social popularity contest. I just don't get all this bashing of Google+ about stuff that its users don't even care about. Next up people will bash Linux for not having as many users as Windows?

  8. Stupid Metrics by mseeger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    <SARCASM=ON> OK, the average visitor spends about 1 hour at Walmart while the average buyer at Amazon leaves the site after 3min. So drop your Amazon shares and buy Walmarts....</SARCASM>

    This is such a 20th century metric ;-)

    In earnest: Perhaps FB ist usefull to people who don't know what to do else. I am perfectly happy to be up-to-date with most of my contacts in 10min on G+. Time is the most valuable stuff i have.

  9. You are not making sense by walterbyrd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If google does not give my personal information to advertisers, then my personal information is neither sold, or rented.

    Would you not agree?