Online Loneliness At Google+ 456
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."
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Real name policy to blame? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it might be the reason that critical mass wasn't achieved. I was really hoping that this would trump facebook.
Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
But then I remembered something, it's still a pointlessly boring social media site, and abandoned it.
Public posts? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Real name policy to blame? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's more likely about the censorship. Quite a few users in my circles opted out after complaining about censorship. I'll probably join the ex-Google users soon.
What people learned from Facebook: (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
This is all aside from social networking being a complete waste of time (my opinion, anyway...).
Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Public posts? Some of us don't give a shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
All G+ is empty discussion is meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Google doesn't want participation... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you're following the wrong people? If your goal is just to read idle ramblings from your friends and family members, those people are probably unlikely to switch over to G+ or even cross-post. If your goal is to consume interesting content, you can't just add your family members to your circles and expect interesting content to start appearing. I see a lot of people (and organizations) producing interesting content, and while some cross-post between FB and G+, many have different content on each platform, or only post on G+.
Re:Google+ sucks! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No one gives a shit about Google+, more news at (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Google doesn't want participation... (Score:5, Insightful)
*PUBLIC* posts (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Google doesn't want participation... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
They had a decent enough buzz. They had a decent enough product. They utterly failed on the delivery.
Let's look at how Facebook (inadvertently!) succeeded with its introduction:
- release the product to a small number of people who all know each other and feel exclusive
- release the product to another small number of people who all know each other and feel exclusive
- release the product to still more people who all know each other and feel exclusive
- open it up to the world and let it grow organically
Now, here's what Google did:
- generate a lot of buzz about a promising new product
- allow a limited number of invites, but allow anyone to be invited, so new people who join know only the person who invited them, and can't even invite new people yet. But they do feel exclusive, and can't wait until they know someone.
- feed the anticipation of all the people who are clamoring to get an account
- open up invitations to anyone
- reject new sign-ups from people who were invited once they hit an unspecified threshold, so that only a small number of new people actually signed up, and the only person each knows is the one who invited him
- open up invitations to anyone
- reject new sign-ups from people who were invited once they hit an unspecified threshold, so that only a small number of new people actually signed up, and the only person each knows is the one who invited him
- open up invitations to anyone
- reject new sign-ups from people who were invited once they hit an unspecified threshold, so that only a small number of new people actually signed up, and the only person each knows is the one who invited him
- eventually, people got tired of being rejected and didn't sign up, or left because they didn't know many people when they first joined.
- open it up to the world.
Did Google really expect people to just "try again later" after receiving an invitation and being rejected? Twice? Three times?
Major introduction fail.
One more step I'm unwilling to take (Score:2, Insightful)
I was already annoyed with Google's obvious profiling tricks; apparently harvesting my gmail to display advertising. When I got duped into associating my YouTube account with my Google account (*now* I understand), I was seeing people in my gmail senders lists showing up as recommended movies. I'm trying to walk back my Google dependence, not add a new data mining node on my TIA profile.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:google+ has some privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Public vs. Private posts? (Score:0, Insightful)
Google's silence on the matter is telling, though. If there was a significant success story to be spun from G+, they'd be spinning it furiously.
They're not.
Is it as bad as this article makes it sound? Probably not. Is it still pretty bad? Probably.
You're doing it wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess a social network means different things to different people. Why would I join a social network when I can just send e-mails to my family and friends? You talk about consuming content from "random people", and suggest internet sites where you can find random posts. I'm talking about following specific people (from close friends to strangers) that I know produce interesting content. These aren't quite the same things.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yea, that's great. Glad to see your opinion on here, and where you implied that "everyone" else feels the same way you do.
Except, it seems the majority of humans do use Facebook, but not G+. So it's not their aversion of social networks that's stopping them from using G+, but rather something else.
I wish the mods would stop up-voting anti-social-network posts. I know it's trendy on /. to post that stuff, but it's repetitive, and it offers no real insight on as to why G+ did not pick up, and Facebook remains champion.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... G+ has really evolved to start hitting a VERY different target market than Facebook.
Facebook is for those who want to keep in touch with personal friends.
G+ is for those who wish to engage with the world at large. Similar to you, I am almost always using G+, it's always open in a tab at home and I look at it more often than Facebook now. I'm now a Cyanogenmod maintainer for an Android device (Galaxy Note), and G+ has been an excellent way to connect with others in the Android community.
I post on Facebook and I also post on G+ - the content I post is VERY different. Also, many people may not post directly on their own profiles, but use G+ primarily to engage with other posters.
I honestly am seeing G+ as more of a competitor to blogging platforms than as a competitor to Facebook at this point.
Apps (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
cyanogenmod?
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I rather suspect that any names I provide here will be met with, "those people aren't interesting to me, therefore your point is invalid."
But off the top of my head (and it's possible that some FB posts exist for these people, but I don't generally see much content from them):
- David Hobby (Strobist)
- Wil Wheaton
- Ben Krasnow
- Randall Munroe (xkcd, not active lately)
The thing for me is that G+ and FB are just different. Different types of people are attracted to G+ versus Facebook, and so different types of content appear on G+. G+ is used in different ways than FB. A metric like "public posts" is pretty worthless when you consider that one of the big draws for G+ was its ability to keep your posts private to specific circles. People that find that valuable would have tried G+ early, might still prefer posting there, and would be invisible to a study like this.
Re:No one gives a shit about Google+, more news at (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No one gives a shit about Google+, more news at (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Real name policy to blame? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had several invites to Google+ but haven't created an account, not specifically because of the real name policy but because of Google's ToS.
I started using Google products many years ago, and some of them I use anonymously. I have a film review blog on blogspot, for example, where I sometimes review films with violence and nudity, and sometimes I use bad words. (No one reads it; it's just for me to remember things.) I don't want that blog associated with my real name since I do some stuff in politics.
If Google publicized how they wanted to keep each of their products separate, where we could use some publicly and some privately and no information would be shared, then I would create a Google+ account. But that's not what they've done at all. No, instead, they change their ToS and talk about how they want to share data between all their products, so I (and my friends?) might get advertisements based on things I did on another product, even if I did so under a pseudonym.
Sorry, Google, but NO. Just NO.
That said, I have a Facebook account to keep up with friends and family since (for the most part) that's what they use, and I can either do so or be a hermit. But I only created it last year, and I started out knowing it's attached to my real name and anything might get released to the public. Google's fault is that I already used them in other ways before they created their social network, something that doesn't apply to Facebook.
Random "members" (Score:4, Insightful)
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+.
Re:One are I *do* see participation... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No one gives a shit about Google+, more news at (Score:4, Insightful)
I never implied that it was a bad product. Just a poorly timed product that didn't differentiate from its competitors
Re:No one gives a shit about Google+, more news at (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:Google doesn't want participation... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No one gives a shit about Google+, more news at (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Facebook has size; Google+ has substance (Score:2, Insightful)
The way I like to say it is: Google+ is where Facebook users go when they grow up.
Re:No one gives a shit about Google+, more news at (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:No one gives a shit about Google+, more news at (Score:4, Insightful)
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.