Online Loneliness At Google+

An anonymous reader writes "Google+ is a lonely place. At least according to a new study that paints the social networking site as a virtual tumbleweed town. Using information culled from the public timelines of 40,000 randomly selected members, data analysis firm RJMetrics found that the Google+ population, which currently numbers 170 million, is largely disengaged, with user activity rapidly decaying—at least when it comes to public posts. According to RJMetrics, 30 percent of first-time Google+ public posters don't post again. Of those who make five public posts, only 15 percent post again. The average time lapse between posts is 12 days, and RJMetrics cites a cohort analysis showing that members tend to make fewer public posts with each successive month. And the response to public posts on Google+ is extremely weak. The average post receives fewer than one reply, fewer than one '+1' (the equivalent to Facebook's 'Like'), and fewer than one re-share — basically most posts in the study did not garner any response."

Comments

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm following over 30 people and not one has posted in over two months (March 5th, to be exact), yet the same people continue to post on facebook.

Even the early adopters aren't using it heavily.

[MsWhich]

My local circle of friends went in heavily for Google+ as soon as it opened. Two of them actually cancelled their Facebook accounts in favor of having only Google+, although tellingly, one of those has since reopened his FB account and started using it on a regular basis again; the other one is still a Google+ diehard, but did reopen an "events-only" FB account because he was tired of getting left out of event invitations.

I started a thread on G+ recently asking my circles if they were still getting value from G+, and the general consensus was that people want it to work, like the features, but just aren't seeing the social interaction that would make it viable. A lot of people reported that they use it primarily as a blog aggregator. This has been my experience as well, and I'm probably a heavier G+ user than most.

I think that the invite-only rollout was probably a misstep, as was not allowing business accounts for the first several months. Lack of event integration is also a problem.

Poor social media integration

[FadedTimes]

Google+ has poor integration with other social mediaapps. Foursquare, Yelp, Twitter, instagram, Pinterest, Flipboard. All these share with each other or at least twitter and facebook. Google+ isn't even an option, and you have to manually copy or create updates on it, which is annoying.

Every time I mention to my social network of 200 that Google+ is dead or dying, I get the same 5 people who say it isn't and also happen to be the only 5 people in my circles who share anything.

What I find

[C_Kode]

I find that Google posters are more technically incline. Most of the people I circle are tech types or something else I find cool. I've also noticed that most people post to circles and not public. I will see people commenting on posts, but when I click their profile, they are sharing nothing.

My guess this has to do with them being more technical. Companies and everyone else are searching the Internet to see what you do online. If you don't share your post with them, they can't see it.

As for G+ being dead. I don't see it. G+ only allows 500 comments per post and I see maxed out post comments quite often. (very annoying Google, fix it!)

I suppose if you are an outsider looking in, it could look like a ghost town. Especially if you are choosing random people to follow. A lot of random G+ers don't want you seeing what they are posting.

Facebook IPO may change that

[sl4shd0rk]

If you think FB has privacy issues now.... Google+ may have a lot of new accounts after the FB IPO* hits. Not that Google is any better privacy-wise, but people wanting to share their entire life online may have to choose the lesser of two evils.

* http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/technology&id=8663072

but for working groups

[Anonymous Coward]

it kicks the shit out of anything else I know of right now.

picture an event that takes 5 months of work by teams scattered over 4 cities. Google+ is a giant help. the hangouts allow face to face meeting combined with screen sharing. the information being built by google earth I can turn around and drop into the circle that is doing the work.

it's actually a great group solution. something that facebook sucks at.

taz

It is a scary place

[fermion]

There are two reasons I use google services. One is to create an alias for a particular focus of online activity. The other is to set up services I need for work, also under a specific alias. Niether of these depend on my real identity since both function better with an outward facing identity that topic related. I am not dependent on Google services, but my life would me much harder if I did not have access to them.

So imagine my surprise when Google started suspending account that were not related to a real person. Though I did set up a Google+ account, I have been too worried about losing my Google Docs accounts to actually do anything on Google+. It seems from online posting that one Google gets on your case you are screwed.

Re:What people learned from Facebook:

[AdrianKemp]

Largely off-topic but I like that you mentioned #3.

I think that's what Facebook did so very, very well. I find shit posted about me constantly despite the fact that I would never post it myself. It wouldn't even matter if I didn't have an account and although that pisses me off there's nothing I can do about it. I've tried convincing my friends and family that posting everything online is a really bad idea but they don't get it and I like human interaction so I'm stuck.

Incidentally, it seems to be something that Google+ inherently avoids, which makes it so very much nicer but simultaneously destined to failure.

Google+ is just not great for normal people

[davevr]

There are three major problems:

1) Google+ was just not designed for real people with messy social relationships that can't be easily categorized.

2) Like most of Google products, Google+ has an odd clinical feel about it. Things like using a math equation (+1) instead of an ordinary word like "Like" or "Thumbs Up:. There are dozens of similar problems. It doesn't matter for search, which can be utilitarian, but it doesn't go well with social stuff.

3) People actually subconsciously prefer a company that is dedicated that social networking, like FaceBook or MySpace, than a company that is doing it on the side, like Microsoft or Google.

Here is a recent blog post discussing 1 & 2:

http://dvronay.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-google-is-still-not-working-for.html

Re:Public posts?

[Githaron]

When, I read the summary that was the first thing I thought. Most of the people who use Google+ use it specifically because they can do both private and public posting from the same site. I do agree the Google+ is not very active in comparison to Facebook but most of the people I know who post actively, post privately. Counting public posts is a bad metric to measure how active Google+ is.

Re:What people learned from Facebook:

[kiwimate]

5) Facebook is just an ugly background away from being Myspace.

That's why Facebook succeeded and MySpace has become irrelevant.

It sounds like a paradox, but MySpace lost because of the freedom they gave people to customize their pages. People went wild, in exactly the way you'd expect from 15 year old kids - as tacky and in your face as possible with bling, animations, flashy gaudy banners, music playing. Pages were unusable.

Facebook exercised tight control over what you could do with your page, making it far more scalable. People lost interest in the struggle to merely load a page on MySpace to see what was going on.

This next comment will blow minds here on Slashdot, but consider - Facebook succeeded for the same reason Google did. Their predecessors had become overwhelming with excess. Both Facebook and Google appeared as a breath of fresh air - clean, simple, usable.

Re:Wow

[TallDarkMan]

The thing for me is that G+ and FB are just different.

I totally agree with that statement, and I would like to add my own take on it: Using both FB and G+, I am starting to feel like I felt about FB versus MySpace...the newer one (back then FB, now G+) seems much more "mature" than the older one (MySpace then, FB now). Over the past year, more and more, I look at the content on FB and feel like I'm back in high school...immature, drama-driven drivel that I get little from, in the way of information or even entertainment. However, the more I peruse G+, the more I see engaging content and offerings....and at the very least, when I read the posts, I'm not constantly thinking to myself, "How old are you?"

I also disagree with another poster's assessment about the security/privacy. I feel like I've got a much better handle on who sees what on G+ than FB. And from what I hear about friends blocking other users, or just "un-friending" someone, and yet still having stuff seen or shared amongst those same users, I'm shying away from what I post on FB more and more.