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Users Spend More Time On Myspace Than Google+

Posted by Soulskill on from the never-underestimate-the-power-of-shiny-flashing-objects dept.

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."

26 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. LOL ... by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wow, nobody has posted yet. Apparently nobody cares about Google + enough to even try for a first post.

    I know I've seen no incentive whatsoever to use Google+, and I have a gmail account that I've had for years which doesn't correspond to a real name -- so their whole "thou shalt have a real name" as an ID thing is a non-starter for me.

    In all honesty, I'm not even sure of what Google + is meant to be used for, or why I'd even care.

    --
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    1. Re:LOL ... by dward90 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Google isn't going to let its foray into the most profitable market... possibly ever (sales of personal information of others), just fade off into obscurity.

      Can you provide a single example where Google has ever sold personal information to any third party ever? I get that privacy is important and Google might be pushing the boundaries on it, but spreading FUD like this isn't helping your cause.

      --
      My other sig is clever.
    2. Re:LOL ... by P-niiice · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I agreed, there was no reason to use Google + - but I clicked in this week and people are actually posting and they are people I care about because my list isn't bloated.

      So I'm going to start looking at plus now. I stopped using Facebook months ago.

    3. Re:LOL ... by artor3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My friends and I use G+, but not the way people use Facebook. It's more like an enhanced group email. We always used to have these email chains where someone would send out something interesting to everyone on the list, and people would just reply-all to that, either chatting or planning a party or whatever. Now we do the same thing on G+ since it makes it a bit easier. But I'd never "hang out" on the site (nor do I understand why people hang out on Facebook). I just log in from my phone, see if anything's happening, maybe fire off a reply, and log back off.

    4. Re:LOL ... by SomePgmr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Of course not, and neither does Facebook or they wouldn't be worth anything.

      Which brings it all back to the merits of the two services to the end users. I'm sorry to say it, but Facebook is very well done and already has everyone you know, while G+ brings nothing to the table.

      On rare occasions I pull G+ up, and it's the same thing... people I don't know saying crap I don't care about, and no obvious way to change that. I'd wager that's where the 3 minute figure comes from... people occasionally looking to see if it sucks less.

      So why would I use it? And why isn't anyone at Google asking themselves that question?

    5. Re:LOL ... by samkass · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Google isn't going to let its foray into the most profitable market... possibly ever (sales of personal information of others), just fade off into obscurity.

      Can you provide a single example where Google has ever sold personal information to any third party ever? I get that privacy is important and Google might be pushing the boundaries on it, but spreading FUD like this isn't helping your cause.

      They don't sell the data directly, they sell *you* as targets to advertisers (96% of their revenue). And when Google controls your search, email, IM, social, video, phone, map, documents, and site analytics, them "selling" the information to different business areas within Google is just as bad. Facebook may have had their privacy issues in the past, but they're just one company that does one site (and does it well). With Google's new anti-privacy policy, they are explicitly reserving the right to take all that information and do whatever they want with it internally.

      --
      E pluribus unum
    6. Re:LOL ... by slyrat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wow, nobody has posted yet. Apparently nobody cares about Google + enough to even try for a first post.

      I know I've seen no incentive whatsoever to use Google+, and I have a gmail account that I've had for years which doesn't correspond to a real name -- so their whole "thou shalt have a real name" as an ID thing is a non-starter for me.

      In all honesty, I'm not even sure of what Google + is meant to be used for, or why I'd even care.

      This isn't true anymore. You can easily set up accounts or use accounts with not real names for google plus. admittedly this was a policy of theirs but it has been fixed.

    7. Re:LOL ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      I thought the advertising I got smitten with on various non google websites that where obviously targeted at me due to the content of an invoice I send to a customer was pretty tantalizing evidence of google fucking around with my data.

      I don't trust them and I don't use them any more. And guess what, the intarwebs is still very much usable!

    8. Re:LOL ... by Anthony+Mouse · · Score: 4, Interesting

      With Google's new anti-privacy policy, they are explicitly reserving the right to take all that information and do whatever they want with it internally.

      Can you explain what it is that causes such alarm about the new privacy policy (other than that the WSJ keeps writing negative stories about Google)?

      As far as I can tell there are two primary privacy questions when someone is using a web service:

      (1) What data do they collect? This is important because eve if they don't intend to do anything objectionable, they could still be forced to turn it over to a totalitarian government or someone could break in and steal it and you would then see the problems like you see in (2). The trouble with this is that it's a losing battle -- everybody collects everything they can get their hands on, so unless you want to be like Richard Stallman and read the internet by having people print it out on paper for you, there isn't much you can do. Plus, especially in the case of the totalitarian government, there is no way to actually verify that they aren't being forced to collect more data than they say they are. More importantly, this isn't the thing that changed in the new privacy policy, so if you were OK with this before then nothing has changed.

      Which leads to:
      (2) What do they use it for? The things to be worried about are that they provide it to insurance companies who use it to raise your rates or deny coverage, or provide it to governments who use it to silence dissidents, or that they're just loose with distributing it to anyone and it ends up in the hands of insurance companies and governments. But according to the privacy policy, that isn't what they're doing. They're using it internally, obviously to target ads. If you refrain from reading the ads, the effect on you is inconsequential. If you read them, you see ads that are somewhat more relevant... which doesn't seem like a particular cause for outrage.

      So where is the path that leads to something bad happening? What terrible end result is enabled by the new privacy policy that was not possible under the old one?

  2. google does one thing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    ...it leverages the dominant position it gained from its PageRank search system (which, like all good things, was done in an academic environment and then closed for profit) during the dotcom boom to sell eyeballs to increasingly desperate advertisers across the world.

    Everything else is as any other company would achieve, if it had the cash to buy reasonable talent and buy out any company which might correspond to its interests. But there are no stars in Google.

    Kinda reminds us of that M... place. You know, the one with the HILARIOUS borg icon on /. for so long, because MS was so interested in merging your knowledge with its o.. oh.

  3. that's on purpose by Unordained · · Score: 5, Interesting

    G+ fits my desire for social-networking perfectly: I hardly have to spend any time on it to get what I want out of it. I spend no time whatsoever on the other systems, because they're more cumbersome and demand my time in ways I'm not comfortable with. G+ is the only system that lets me contribute the little amount of time I'm willing to contribute, without being useless. So maybe its users *do* use it for fewer minutes a month -- but isn't that okay? Is there not a market for that? Lots of people probably watch crappy TV -- should we judge other channels based on the fact that they have a few, well-targeted shows, that a segment of the population watches (but nothing else)? Maybe it should be our goal to use these systems less, not more! In that respect, G+ represents an increase in efficiency -- which is a driver of GNP. So it's a good thing. Go G+!

    1. Re:that's on purpose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I agree. I rarely use it, but when I do, it's indispensable. Top use: pushing out notifications to various circles. I know that the people in these circles get the information, and if it's important enough for them to comment, they do. Unlike most FB users I know, I'm not that terribly self-involved, and so don't feel the need to keep the world apprised of all of my actions. I see that G+ fits a completely different niche than FB, and that's completely fine with me.

    2. Re:that's on purpose by Tharsman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So maybe its users *do* use it for fewer minutes a month -- but isn't that okay? Is there not a market for that?

      Not really. Social networks are not cheap to run, and they barely can gain any ad revenue if all you do is go in and out once a day.

      I know Qudora is not the best source of info but this Q&A seems to have some logic behind it (and the numbers match):

      http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-does-Facebook-make-from-a-single-user-using-the-site-for-1-hour
      How much money does Facebook make from a single user using the site for 1 hour?
      4 cents/user per hour of usage, with the following assumptions:
      $2b in revenue in 2010, 540m unique monthly users, average usage of 7 hours per month per user.

      IF we are talking the same profit ratios, this means 90 million users * (3/60) * 4c = 180,000 a month.

      Thats absolutely nothing for a company like Google.

      Also keep in mind Facebook is capitalizing heavily on in-game currency for games like FarmVille, something I dont think Google is doing, so the average may be even lower than 4 cents for Google.
      This means that G+ is running at..

  4. Re:No reason to use it? by Tharsman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Only reason I find to use a social network other than Facebook is privacy concerns. But lets be honest, Google is not the first company you look at when you ask yourself "who will take my privacy more seriously?"

    Only alternative for social networking, in my eyes, is Twitter since (to my knowledge, they may be very good at hiding it) they only care about my posts and hash tags, not about tracking my every move in the web.

  5. Re:No reason to use it? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yep, users are locked into Facebook nice and tight, tighter than any lock-in any OS ever had because there is zero compatibility of any kind between Facebook and G+...or anything else for that matter. At least most of your files would work with different apps on different OSes.

    Users will get off of Facebook once something much better comes along and Facebook stagnates, the same thing that got people off of MySpace and onto Facebook in the first place, and the same with Geocities before that...

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  6. Niche market by sqrt(2) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Google could do well if they pivoted to the niche market of academics, science, engineering, technology, and journalists. Some of the discussions on Google+ for those areas of interest are actually very high quality. Certainly better than anything you get on Facebook.

    It's highly subjective and a matter of personal taste, but I find the interface and presentation of Google+ to be superb, it really blows FB out of the water. I can't stand how cluttered and busy it's become while G+ is clean and just feels right. The "circles" metaphor and interface is a pretty good step forward for social networking, it doesn't get the credit it deserves for at least being the easiest to use and understand way to bring some granularity to what you share and who you share it with.

    I don't want to see Facebook unseated, but I would love to see Google light a fire under them. Competition is good for users of both sites.

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  7. the fine print... by sjwt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mr. Horowitz declined to share data about how much time people spend on Google+ but said "we're growing by every metric we care about." ...
    When asked what metrics Google+ cared about, the answer was a straight faced "Any metric that is growing"

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  8. Re:No reason to use it? by mcgrew · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been to MySpace more in the last week than G+. Actually it's been a while since I went to G+, although I may use it for video conferencing with my daughter in Ohio if she ever gets her smartphone to work with it.

    Why have I been to MySpace? I've been re-ripping CDs, and quite a few are from local indie bands that aren't on wikipedia or Amazon, and the only place I can find cover art for the rips is MySpace.

    --
    Free Martian Whores!
  9. Re:No reason to use it? by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The incentive for me is to have proper control of my privacy settings and sane sharing defaults. Zuckerberg's whole "everyone should share their whole lives with the world" mantra just does not fit with me and that is why Facebook does not fit with me. I had 200+ friends on facebook and only a tiny fraction of that on G+ - yet I spend way more time on G+ than I ever did on Facebook.

  10. So Google+ is more efficient? by Xphile101361 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So it takes me 7 hours to do everything on Facebook that it takes me only 3 minutes to do on Google+? I like the efficiency rating.

  11. Re:No reason to use it? by vlm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously that might work. The journalist / media assumption is social media is only grannie auntie and the creep from middle school talking about nothing. Its even embedded into the language as "friend" and "friending". G+ seems to be going another direction into something like world wide/online/hobby clubs...

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  12. Re:nice. by Culture20 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes! I've had a damn hard time searching for stuff with google lately because it ignores Anthony but the first three search words, so I have to order my search terms in different ways. It's almost as bad as using five search engines back in the day. While we're at it, can there be a check box to allow searching with punctuation? That's actually important to some searches.

  13. Re:It's The People, Stupid by vlm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    or at least everybody they knew was

    Ah that seems to be the key. FB is for people you know, however tenuously distant like that kid who sat next to you at lunch hour 20 years ago. G+ is for people who share interests with you. I've "met" some freaking amazing photographers, a couple decent hardware hackers, a couple decent cooks/chefs, some decent programmers, hundreds of ham radio operators...

    Has anyone had any luck meeting and conversing with people in the hobbiest/interest type groups on FB or linkedin or whatever else? seems to be a spammy empty wasteland, but G+ actually more or less works for that.

    Before I deleted FB years ago, 90% was people I knew and 10% was people I found. G+ seems to have flipped that ratio, which no one seems to be talking about. Yes there are exceptions, if you work at GOOG probably everyone you work with is there, but otherwise its the land of hobbies.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  14. I *liked* G+... but they are driving me away by cybersquid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Specifically, google emailed me last night that they will suspend my account if I don't use me real name.

    Apparently their desire for new users is less than their need to be dicks to the ones they have.

    Too bad. I liked G+.

  15. Could be said Google+ members are above average by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Having comScore in their HOST file. :) I didn't know who comScore was but it's in my HOSTS file under a few different addresses. I go through my cookies before I delete them, trackers or such I'll add to my rather huge HOSTS file. Myself, I don't do "social" sites.

  16. Missed their real window by Jim+Hall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not sure where the article gets their numbers, so I can't comment on that.

    However, I will say that Google missed their real window in launching Google+. It seems Google just doesn't have the "knack" of advertising and seizing on opportunity, despite being an advertising company. Don't get me wrong, I like Google and all that. I just think they need to hire some PR folks, rather than letting the engineers run things.

    IIRC, about a week after Google+ started in "invite-only beta", there was yet another security fiasco with Facebook. But this one was big, really huge. It was all over the news, it was all I heard about, and it seemed like everyone I knew was threatening to jump off Facebook because of it. I thought, "Someone at Google is watching this, and is going to open up the beta to everyone." But no one ever did.

    That would have been the perfect time to really open up Google+, when everyone wanted an alternative to their ongoing security woes at Facebook. Never happened. Google continued their sloooooooooow rollout of the "invite-only" beta. Finally, months later, Google finally opened Google+ to everyone who wanted to join.

    But it was too late. Google+ was a ghost town. Only a few people I knew were on Google+. The rest of my friends eventually "got over" whatever the Facebook security problem-of-the-day was, and stayed on Facebook. Since my friends are on Facebook, I stayed on Facebook.

    For all that, Google+ does have a killer feature: Hangouts. I wish they'd made a big deal out of this when Google+ launched - like, showed it in action or something, ads on TV, whatever. It's like Skype or any other video chat, except you can have up to 10 people on at the same time (you + 9 others.) We have a hosted domain for work, and we use Hangouts all the time to talk to people at different locations within the organization. It's really freed us from having to share a single video conference room at our location.