Google Now Boasts World's No. 2 and No. 3 Social Networks
redletterdave writes "A new report released Monday revealed that Google+, less than a year and a half after its public debut, is now the No. 2 social network in the world with 343 million active users. Even better for Google, YouTube, which had not previously been tracked as a social network until recently, is now the No. 3 social network in the world with about 300 million active users. Google Plus and YouTube are being used by 25 percent and 21 percent of the global Internet populace, respectively."
Youtube is more a number 2 in terms of content being dumped out by the commenters
42?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Not to belittle what Google has done and purchased, but what other options were and are there? Google was supposed to be more secure than 1 other social network company. It is, though many distrust Google as much as they distrust Facebook when it comes to releasing information to Governments. Youtube was acquired, and for "Movies" and "Videos" was already a healthy and stable company. If it was launched as a social media site, I doubt it would have the depth it does. An alternative would have popped up in my opinion.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Not too long ago, YouTube asked me if I wanted to change my YouTube name to something else.
I thought 'Sure, why not.'
And out of nowhere, I became a Google+ user.
For a couple of months now, they've been tricking YouTube users into getting Google+ accounts.
shouldn't orkut be on the list as well? I guess orkut would be 4th in that list, then the title should be
"Google Now Boasts World's No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 Social Networks"
I wonder how they determined "active users," since these days its getting easier and easier for anyone with a GMail-based account to find themselves "using" Google+.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
What do they mena by "active" users, anyway? Does anyone know?
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
How much money are they making?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
This is like saying that Hydrox is the #2 chocolate and cream cookie next to Oreo. It still sucks, and nobody likes it.
How many of them are spammers and phishers?
... then Google+ might be the only relevant social networking site. Facebook, twitter, etc, are still mostly plugged up with people taking pictures of their (coffee / cat / car) or telling you which bathroom they are using this afternoon. Google+ actually has meaningful discussions.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The more important matter is how much are they being used, especially to "socialize" as compared to facebook? I mean Google forces you to be a Google+ user pretty much if you use any of their services - Gmail, Picasa etc. What are the ad revenues on these services? What is the frequency of posts per user?
I'd say that's a bit far-fetched. But then again, this practice has been employed throughout the ages. If you're losing at a game, change the rules. (The rules being the definition of 'social network').
I wonder how they determined "active users,"
You can google for this quite trivially, basically your definition of gmail, clicking +1 and stuff is the much bigger "somewhat under four hundred million" number from a couple months ago whereas the number of people actually making posts to their G+ stream is the somewhat smaller "well over one hundred ish million" number also a couple months out of date.
Unless youtube has zero or negative number users, it would seem they're using the latter definition "people who actually post stuff to their G+ profile" as their definition of "active" and then adding it to somewhere around 200M youtube users to get a bit over 300 million total as claimed. If they used your definition they'd be crowing about a number closer to 600M rather than 300M.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
you +1 something once a month, you're an active user
Define active. I've got a Google+ account, but rarely use it.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
At least it doesn't automatically fuck around with your accounts across sites. I'm sure this scenario has happened to some of you FB users before:
- See video on one of those "youtube with nudity allowed" sites such as dailymotion
- "This video is not suitable for minors, please sign in to confirm your age"
- "Hmm, okay, it'll be easier if I just use FB to log in instead of creating an account for a site I don't really care about."
- Watch video o.o
- Several hours later
- Check FB
- You have a post on your Wall about watching the video, with comments on it from other people
Yeah, after this happened I all but stopped using the site entirely. On the other hand, Google is quite clear with how you share information across sites. I don't need to worry about a comment on some blog ending up getting sent to friends on G+, or some log of what YouTube videos I watched in the past week.
Any one using any Google product, picasa, gmail, youtune, google apps, anything, are being roped in as google+ users.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second."
The first race was actually for the "R.Y.S. £100 Cup", subsequently re-named "America's cup"
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It doesn't count if you work for Google. That is the only people I really see there.
Both my grammas are on Facebook, I didn't hear them saying they are thinking about opening a Google+ account.
To be fair, FB once talked about how they made email obsolete because people just used FB messaging. So it's not a far stretch to associate gmail with Google+. If you have a Google account you have a Google account. Distinguishing between whether or not you have G+, or youtube, or gmail, or whatever is a silly distinction. You have a Google account and you use one or more of the associated services.
it helps when you essentially own the internet,... seriously what percentage of users never use google or a google owned property for anything?
I must be 3 or more of those people, I have a G-mail account for each Android device (tablet is multi-user, 1 phone is strictly for work and 1 phone is for private texts from my wife). As I recently changed services I noticed that I somehow became a G+ member just by signing up a new device. Can I really be counted as I don't participate?
And Facebook is #1 with 95% of the global populace. The other 5% who didn't use Facebook were nerds who spent all day telling everyone in various other forums how they don't use Facebook.
I thought plus was optional when signing up for an account, but I guess this has now changed?
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
..."Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $8.64 billion, or 67% of total Google revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2012" http://investor.google.com/earnings/2012/Q4_google_earnings.html
What was #1? I want to know if my MySpace account is worth anything.
Which would be more impressive if there were more than 4 social networks with over 100 users on the planet.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Another interesting point of all this happens to be: If you want to put in a review on any app you downloaded to your Android phone into Google Play Store, for better or for worse, requires you to have a google plus account to do it... Seems like a great way to inflate usage stats.
Does having your pictures backed up to Google+ / Picasa count as being an active user? Cause if so, they've got a heavy skew in their numbers. The unlimited space for Picasa users is why I signed up. Now all my pics and home movies are backed up but I don't use any of the "social networking" part of it.
Pop quiz: what's the most popular desktop OS?
Followup question: did you throw up in your mouth a little, at using the word "popular" to describe that OS' marketshare? That's not really an honest way of describe a default "choice," or a "choice" that people are railroaded into thanks to network effects, kicking and screaming, and yet it is technically accurate.
No matter how Google+ got its users, it has them.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I love G+, I do. It's pretty, it's barebones and it doesn't try and sell my friends' pastimes to me (Hi, Facebook!) It's where I post stuff so Manageflitter can tweet it for me. Now maybe my conscious decision to drastically reduce my social graph has something to do with it, but G+ just feels very... unbusy.
That said, I get lots of discussion with "randoms" on G+ compared to Twitter.
Do you see what I did there?
No wonder about G+ since if you want to review Androod apps you must have an account by force. Maybe soon they will force us to have one for download apps, so the point is how many of those accounts in G+ are used for free will rather by forced. Same happens with Chrome which is pushed now in every freeware app out there, you miss check one checkbox and soon the thing shows the ugly face in your desktop.
If you want to put in a review on any app you downloaded to your Android phone into Google Play Store
It does, and there is little doubt this *will* boost Google+ numbers, although I would argue that it is a social interaction [or at least exhibits features of one...like youtube] and Google is simply merging these together. Its less inflating figures...more consolidating social interaction...because users are interacting through Googles services *socially*.
The reality is Google is aggressively pushing its Google+ thought its *successful* social services. The fact that users continue to review apps / comment on video is a sign of it working.
And Facebook is #1 with 95% of the global populace. The other 5% who didn't use Facebook were nerds who spent all day telling everyone in various other forums how they don't use Facebook.
http://globalwebindex.net/thinking/social-platforms-gwi-8-update-decline-of-local-social-media-platforms/ the original article puts Facebook at 650Millionish about half of the PC Market 1.2Billion...or about a 10% of the worldwide population of 7Billion.
Google+ is currently half that sitting at 350 Million [youtube at 300Million]. Which shows how incredibly successful it is on its own merits.
The bottom line though is Facebook has nothing close to your market penetration figures , let alone saturation of the market, or even your massive market share claim lead over Google+, perhaps if you had spent less time, attacking people for working hard and taking interest in the more academic subjects at school you wouldn't look so backward.
Can I really be counted as I don't participate?
If you read the article you would not be counted *unless* you participate hence the measure of active users.
I have had a G+ account at least two or three times. I have deleted them every time, because they won't let me use the only name I am willing to use for social networking. "seebs" is my Real Name; it is not the name on my driver's license, but it is the name I commonly use in everyday life. According to their stated policies, I should be able to use it. But they don't do that, and a casual read of their forums reveals that a non-trivial number of people are having issues with the names thing...
So when they decided to sit on a name appeal for four months rather than commenting, was I "active" during that time? Am I "active" now? Am I three different active accounts? Heck if I know.
Similarly, I know at least one person who was very confused to get a threatening letter about how her name wasn't plausible enough and they were going to delete her G+ account and cancel associated services. She'd never signed up for G+ that she knew of, she had no idea what they were talking about... That's probably an "active user", in their counting.
So... I dunno. I could believe they have a ridiculous number of people who have accounts that they haven't yet cancelled, or don't know they have, or which they posted to once. I have a hard time believing that there's anywhere near that many "active" accounts in any meaningful sense. That said, my sample space is highly atypical (a statistical majority of my friends are trans, for instance, and thus have a tendency to have problems with policies that push for "real" names and won't let you use a name you haven't got matching ID for). So maybe there's a ton of people using it, and I'd know about this except that there's no way for me to use the service for social networking, so it's not very useful to me.
I am told that the real issue isn't that they care whether the name is your "real name", but that they found that some users become uncomfortable when they see people whose "names" don't look like Real Names. I've had at least one Google person claim that the system is looking for names which "look like a name to a human". I did ask whether the implication that people like me who think many of the names they reject look like names are not humans was intentional, but I don't think I ever got an answer.
tl;dr: G+ names policy is a lie, the staff don't follow the stated procedures, and I don't believe for a minute that more than a tiny fraction of the listed number of users are people who actually use G+ for social networking in any meaningful way.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Which would be more impressive if there were more than 4 social networks with over 100 users on the planet.
All of top ten social networks have more than 100million users, perhaps you should have read the article. http://globalwebindex.net/thinking/social-platforms-gwi-8-update-decline-of-local-social-media-platforms/
What was #1? I want to know if my MySpace account is worth anything.
MySpace is 15th perhaps you should have read the article. Although the company as a whole sold on June 2011 to Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake who jointly purchased the company for approximately $35 million. From the graph ...about 50 Cent an active user.