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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."
I use google + daily, always open in a tab.
And each time i go look at the tab, there's something new up on my stream.
So I guess some people do post. If you're not following anyone, no wonder it seems barren.
I think it might be the reason that critical mass wasn't achieved. I was really hoping that this would trump facebook.
Google + was seen as a "Facebook that isn't Facebook", so sure, I made an account and looked around.
But then I remembered something, it's still a pointlessly boring social media site, and abandoned it.
Most people don't post publicly, if that is your only gauge of success, it will show up as not being that active. That's the wonderful this about circles
It's probably still got more users than Diaspora*
(Ducks)
Summation 2
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.
they could care less how often you post.
So they do care a bit? But not much?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
1) You can put your whole life online and it still doesn't mean you're famous.
2) People you know will post snarky crap on your page and shrug their shoulder when you meet them face to face.
3) Everything you've ever been told to safegaurd your privacy is out the window at Facebook. If you don't post it, someone you know already posted about you.
4) A website is automatically uncool the moment your parents join.
5) Facebook is just an ugly background away from being Myspace.
Google+ just didn't make it out of the gate fast enough to get the support from those already attached to Facebook. Because of that, people who did sign up with Google+ didn't have the same support from those they wanted to communicate with so (probably) stuck with Facebook for its user base. Unless Google does something to get users to switch en masse, there's not much they can do about it. You can't expect users to post on both sites and, I'm assuming, anyone that is gung-ho about social networking has been Facebook-whoring for quite a while now and has no intention of starting over.
This is all aside from social networking being a complete waste of time (my opinion, anyway...).
-SaNo
There's a reason those of us that switched did so. If they turned Google+ into another facebook I'd leave. I don't want to be part of a virtual hen-hizzy where everyone is telling me the size of their poop every morning. When I have an update on Google+ I know it's work looking at... where-as with facebook I was so flooded with nonsense I couldn't stand it anymore and deleted my account.
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.
The study says they could only look at public posts. I rarely post publicly and instead use circles to limit who can see what I post. While many of the people I follow on G+ are silent (or at least they don't publish to me), so are most of the people on Facebook. I follow a comparable number of people on G+ and Facebook and my G+ feed is just as busy. I don't see how a study like this can draw any meaningful conclusions from their methodology.
The large majority of the people in my circles with whom I keep active contact with, post almost exclusively Limited, as do I.
Frankly, those who post exclusively Public seem a bit like show-offs and/or "social media consultants" (or "experts"), and who wants to stay in touch with such people?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Every single one of these articles is completely without merit. They all poll Google+ for public information. Guess what, the majority of users on G+ do not post publicly, that is why they choose to be there instead of Facebook. I know personally I moved over to G+ with an already formed circle of Twitter friends. The vast majority of us only end up sharing among the 500 or so members of that loose community. But within that group, the discussion is constant. There are tons of these loosely affiliated circles on the service.
The type of user attracted to Google+ generally is someone looking to discuss things, not necessarily vapidly post about what they had for dinner. It is a different dynamic, and as such needs a different metric to determine participation. Then again at the end of the day I am completely happy with Quality over Quantity.
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
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Bullshit. Their primary business is information collection, with their primary revenue being advertising. If they don't have relevant information to offer to their users, their core business is withering on the vine. If the users decide that they're better off looking for info elsewhere, their advertising revenue dries up.
Google needs an active G+. They're just fighting a losing battle against the network effect.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
second AC I read that says this. I'd be cool if you provided examples so as to validate your anonymous claims a bit better.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Google Plus+ the Zune of Social Media.
There is a really popular product out there, the big company comes in much to late in the game, offers a product that isn't that much better, and not much cheaper. In hopes that you big name will oust the already well known name.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's funny that the summary and article quote 170 million users too. This is not the actual Google+ user count, it's just the user count of Google accounts that have been tricked to join it along using other Google services. And by active, they mean active if you use any Google products like search, youtube, etc.
The whole premise of G+ is that it's built around private sharing with your circles. There's a lot of public sharing, sure -- but it's INTENDED to be private. That was the whole selling point for why people chose to use it over Facebook. My G+ feed is constantly being updated in a very lively manner with both public and limited posts by a variety of people.
The study is based on a flawed premise. They should find some other metric aside from "public posts" for determining how engaged the userbase is.
Posting is information. Why do you think Facebook is so hot on wallstreet?
Because no one really knows what their books look like? Because they spent $1B on a shitty company like Instagram just to see if anyone would flinch, and when no one did, they knew they could basically write a blank check and investors would sign it? Or maybe (the simplest explanation) it's been like 5 years since there has been an interesting IPO and institutional investors are desperate to make mutual funds look appealing again?
A G+ acc is required to use that 'sharing' feature, and it will post the story on your G+ page. I did not realise that Google Reader community was that big. Back then the Recommended section had many interesting stories, now it is plagued with life hacker posts. I started to hate google after that.
That's why I post on Slashdot. I know I can talk about XXXXXXX, XXX XXXXXX and XXXXX without any worry of censorship.
Rule #1. Never post anything about yourself, that you don't want your employer or future to know.
Even if it has good privacy issues, and you only share with your friends. It could happen that your Friend becomes a future employer. And he may have changed in the last 10 years but you haven't.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If you're not having a good time on Google+, then you're doing it wrong. Click on the explore button on the left, post to a few threads that you find interesting, and I've ended up with over 100 people following my posts, about a third of them I actually know. I don't spam a lot of my own posts, I put up stuff I do that I enjoy, and might post original content or share something once every 3 days. Still it's not a ghost town if you bother to look for someone you think does cool stuff and just put them in a followers circle so you see their public posts on your stream. If you're a geek I recommend Wil Wheaton, and Felicia Day. Leo LaPorte is good too, but he posts less than I do, which is surprising since he came out as a big supporter of G+ and he's a content author by trade. I also follow Wired Magazine, and Marissa Mayer. None of which give me more than I can keep up with, but that doesn't mean I read all of it either.
I personally quite enjoy Google+. I write there about once or twice a week on average and I write about things that I feel are worth saying and I always write in English so as for my thoughts to be internationally readable. The site is clean and useable, though I still think the layout needs some more work. Facebook on the other hand.... well, I write there only like once or twice every two-three months and even then only as a response to something; Facebook is cluttered, annoying, and I have relegated it for only the irrelevant, meaningless flutter that my so-called 'friends' like to share. I tend to use Google+ more like an interactive blog than a chatting- or trend-watching-platform, so perhaps that explains why I like it so much better. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Google+ suits me better than anything else I've found so far.
That said, I also have to agree with the sentiment that Google+ feels like a rather empty place. I still haven't found anything worth following, for example, and many of the entities I might actually care to follow aren't there. I can understand why, though: Facebook attracts people with short attention-spans, people who like to follow trends and what others do and say, and people who can be rather easily swayed, whereas Google+ seems to attract people with more pronounced individual traits. In other words, Facebook attracts exactly the kind of people companies love. This should obviously not be seen as a failure on Google+'s part -- something so many seem to imply -- but instead as a success in attracting entirely different kind of people; how can it be a failure when you are successfully attracting people who aren't attracted to other offerings?
Sounds like you can't provide any actual evidence and proceed to denigrate Google based on spurious and maybe even intentional misinformation.
G+ attempts to solve a problem that has already been solved. The solution to maintaining different "circles" evolved into having different accounts. This was hindered for a short time by a lack of cross-posting but that was quickly solved by a set of APIs and app makers like TweetDeck. Personally, I have my family and majority of friends on FB, core friends and more comedy-driven people on twitter. I know I can crack certain snarky jokes on twitter that would offend my 2nd cousins and a high school friend. Those are the only 2 circles I need right now but if I need more, I can make a separate account. As it is, I cross-post my status updates, tweet snarky comments, facebook post family-friendly stuff, and on rare occasion G+ post techy things that weren't snarky. That results in about one post a month to G+ and daily posts to the others. I get the feeling this is a similar setup to many users of social media.
If our social lives are in either one circle or on an app which manages our circles, we have no need of G+. Communities don't move overnight. They shrink over time as their members slowly move from one pasture to a slightly greener one. G+ may be slightly greener but if travel there is difficult and I don't know anyone there, every time I head home for a "friend fix" I'm going to be tempted to never return. G+ needs to build a highway soon. Implement Twitter and FB accounts as "external circles" using the existing APIs. Let me make G+ my home while still talking to my existing circles. Let the external circles dwindle as everyone except our parents slowly move over to G+ but let us still talk to our parents. Until that happens, G+, your community will stagnate.
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
This other AC is correct... I subscribe to a photographer who maybe a little militant atheist, and frequently posts about issues regarding homosexuality (though it is far from clear to me that he is actually gay). None of his photos are in anyway porn, but do occasionally show a boob or two. But mostly the complaints roll in for his religion bashing comments. And he has had lots of problems with Google censoring his posts because of this. Brandon Partridge is the photographer, he has been pretty public about his misgivings with Google, although I haven't heard of any problems for a few months. But it was definitely an ongoing thing with him for several months.
Posting as AC just cause I don't know how many people are actually following Brandon.
No, it is a good "product", and has features that top both facebook and twitter, but has some flaws that result in Stream overload, thus leading to the article's comments about not many people getting responses for public posts.
And the whole "Ghost Town" meme is such bullshit. Look, it's hardly a ghost town. My stream has tons of stuff in it today. The only "ghost" part is that mostly it's from people I don't know personally.
G+ is functioning more like an advanced version of Twitter. You "follow" lots of people by putting them in your circles. They post "publicly" and it shows in your stream. You get a ton of posts in your stream. You can comment on them and the poster sometimes comments back or you have a discussion with other commenters. Never could do this effectively on Twitter. But mostly it's working for larger names, bloggers, etc. William Shatner posted today that he has 1.4 million followers, and there were 74 comments to that post (Vic Gundotra of Google being the first poster).
So in a nut shell, the big names get lots of viewers and commenters. But yes, if I post I'm competing with a lot of big names and lots of posts for attention. That is why few people get +1s or comments on their posts. You have to really develop a following of dedicated readers.
If I post to a select group of friends, or a circle, they will not get notified unless I mention them by name or post just to them (and still have to have the right settings for this). And if they don't get notified then my post risks getting lost in the flood of their stream.
Anyway, the point of all this, is that there are some issues with the design of posts/circles/notifications that have lead to the exact condition we are seeing. I think some of these can be fixed, maybe not all.
Oh, also, Google+ Hangouts rock, so just use it for that if nothing else.
Even the use of "+1" comes off as mathematical and robotic. Grandma doesn't want to "+1 something".
Maybe it's my engineering brain, but I never thought of it like that. I think you are right. +1 insightful!..oops..I mean "like"?
It's hard to see why anyone would care about Google+. Their entire pitch is "better privacy than Facebook", which isn't a great pitch. Facebook will probably surpassed eventually by a new SN company, but it will be one that will be advertised as "cool" not "discrete".
Cool factor aside, Google+ objectively has worse privacy than Facebook. Anyone that cares enough about privacy to avoid Facebook, will generally avoid all forms of social networking and also take a very dim view of Google in general. It's not what the company does or doesn't do that's an issue, it's what it could potentially do. Having a search history tied to a social profile is a huge problem. No entity no matter how benign can be entrusted with that much information.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Using information culled from the public timelines of 40,000 randomly selected members...
Google deserves this sort of report given that 95%+ of their Google+ "members" were effectively forced into the system when they made Google Accounts require a Google+ profile.
Of course there is little activity among this group... most of them don't actually use Google+.
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
You know, I have been thinking this as well but have never stated it as clearly as you just did. Some of the interface choices in gmail for instance just leave me flabbergasted. I just think to myself.. "funny engineers". I have noticed this with the google analytics interface as well. Lots of the design decisions they make seem convoluted to me although the technology is obviously pretty cool. And I agree on the +1 comment. I would expect their "dislike" button to be != +1 .
I'm pretty much the same camp. I don't use my normal browser when I need to do something in Facebook as Facebook have proven themselves very interested in playing the shell game with users' privacy settings. Not interested.
However I use/surf G+ pretty regularly. The people in my circles are mainly users I know from a web-based discussion forum (not /.) and the posts are decidedly more intellectually engaging. I prefer G+'s pace where posts come in at about the rate of a dozen or so per day. The people in my circles are more thoughtful in their posts and the posts are of greater topical interests (as opposed to "Here's a pic of my cat eating my adorable offspring").
If preferring G+ to Facebook is wrong I don't want to be right.
blog
It tailors the recommended section to each person. Maybe you should try harder not to be a person Google thinks will like just a bunch of Lifehacker posts.
I get all manner of interesting things in mine.
Porquoi?
I never implied that it was a bad product. Just a poorly timed product that didn't differentiate from its competitors
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I really don't get the anti-Google vibes. Why would people that care about privacy take a worse view of Google than of Facebook? Google has never sold the data they collected or turned over to nasty governments anything that they were not forced to. And that is post-IPO. Imagine what Facebook is going to be like privacy-wise in a few years time, once they realise that they actually need to make a profit?
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
By December 2010, Instagram had one million registered users. In June 2011 Instagram announced it had five million users and it passed ten million in September of the same year. In April 2012, it was announced that over 30 million accounts were set up on Instagram.
Instagram announced that 100 million photos had been uploaded to its service as of July 2011. This total reached 150 million in August 2011.
If that's a poor company in your view, how do you define a good company? It's pretty brazen to claim Facebook did this just to test reactions, when you consider what Facebook does and how neatly Instagram slots in to that user work flow.
And "no one really knows what their books look like"? Did you look at the SEC filing? Or their published balance sheets on their web site?
What do you want to see in terms of financial disclosures that's not out there and which is typical for a company to provide? Be specific.
Otherwise your whole post is just flamebait.
Sorry, its still a ghost town.
In all honesty, I like G+, and if it came around before FB, I would probably use it since I use a lot of Google services, but they just came along in the game too late and messed up opening to the public. I have 800 (legit) friends on fb, why would I bother them to migrate everything to G+ when FB works well enough?
tl;dr - Its a ghost town.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Again it doesn't really matter what they do, it's what they have the capacity to do.
Personally, I don't fit the demographic that doesn't have a Facebook profile, I have one. I didn't mean that post as a statement of my personal beliefs on privacy. I just know a few people that are in that demographic and there is nothing you can do to market social networking to them. Google's product launch was flawed in that it targeted them, and that's why Google+ is failing. If anything, Google+ diminished Google's brand identity by making those people more conscious of the data they were already giving Google, whereas before they were just thinking of Google as a tool, and they began to complain loudly.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
I'm still undecided how much cheaper it is, the price being paid from privacy of course. I know facebook is quite expensive. I have yet to see the pricetag on google plus.
Because Facebook doesn't work well enough? How do I find a historical post someone made on Facebook without scrolling endlessly through their page until I find it? Not to mention searching public profiles/feeds/whatever for some topic of interest. Facebook's mobile apps suck. They suck hard. You'd think the largest social web company in the world would be able to hire some developers to put together mobile apps that blow you away. But they're barely serviceable. The Instant Upload feature of the G+ apps makes getting media to Google+ (videos and photos) light years easier than Facebook.
I think Google+'s major flaw is the comparison to Facebook in the first place. To me, it's more a direct functional replacement for Twitter, but with much better ways to handle interaction and conversation. (For that matter, how do you search Twitter for historical stuff?) And then it can accomplish what Facebook does, too.
Please note that the article talks about _Public_ posts.
I post several times a day in G+, and so do a lot of people in my circles.
However, I hardly ever make public posts.
No sig for the moment.
It's weird. In years gone by their used to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth about why computer games didn't appeal to girls and women. Now, as you say, they're mad for the games. They're far bigger gamers than males now. Not just the Facebook games either. When they're on trains, they're all on their smartphones playing Angry Birds and the like.