Facebook Says That Google+ Has No Users

dkd903 noticed another amusing shot in the battle between G+ and Facebook. CNN is running a story where Facebook's director of game partnership Sean Ryan basically says Google+ has no users. The article is mostly about casual gaming on social platforms, which I am really sick of individually blocking.

Re:Google+

[yelvington]

There's nothing happening there.

Then you're doing it wrong.

Put some interesting people in your circles. It's not all geeks. There's a very active bunch of photographers sharing images, people talking about cooking, local conversations (the mobile app does geolocation-based searches), and group video chat (Hangouts).

Plenty is happening when I log in, but then I have about 500 people in my circles, and more than twice that number have me in their circles. My circles are quite a bit more active (and informative) than my Facebook news feed, but less than my Twitter feed.

There is room for multiple services. This isn't the Highlander.

Counting users by game accounts?

[Snorklefish]

Everyone who's ever intensively played a 'social game' on Facebook knows the simple truth: they're surrounded by fake accounts. For over two years I managed in excess of 40 Facebook accounts without ever being flagged... I presumed most of my 'friends' were fake as well. Even now the accounts are just sitting there, untouched, unused, but inflating FB's user numbers.

I recognize I was cheating. It was wrong and I shouldn't have done it. For my actions, I've chosen to exile myself from FB games altogether. Certainly, not everyone cheats or creates multiple accounts as I did. But I venture that enough 'gamers' do it to seriously distort Facebook's numbers.

Re:Google+

[fyngyrz]

Google+ is a non-starter for me until/unless they stop locking out people who need to be anonymous. Facebook is too, but I never had any expectation that Facebook would do anything right -- Google, frankly, I would like to see get back to at least attempting to "do no evil."