I don't doubt that 60% of people use it daily. I personally click on that +Mladen button a couple of times a day at least. But I'm not so sure that they are using it in the same way as Facebook or Twitter.. that is to say for personal communication with their friends.
None of my friends are on Google+. But there are tons of really smart people that I don't know personally (although I wish I did), who post lots of great content for me to read, and consider and discuss. With this personal experience in mind, I believe the 60% are using it as a content discovery platform, not so much as a social network.. sort of like another Reddit/Twitter
That sounds about right to me. Though obviously there's a spectrum there. One assumes Google's hope is that as the adoption grows, the "None of my friends are on" problem will progressively disappear. When some of your friends are on G+, you'll start posting stuff there. And until then it's a cool way to learn about the restaurants frequented by Lennart Poettering.
When it first launched all of my friends joined and began to post, including the many without facebook accounts due to tight gmail integration. But within a month or two almost all of them stopped posting. Whether they will come back is the question, a profoundly different one than whether they will join at all.
Agreed. I think the user base will continue to grow, mainly because more and more websites are adding the G+ button to get any advantage they can in SEO rankings, and that alone will fuel the growth over the next few months.
However I'm not sure how most users will feel about associating their online activity/searches with their social network.
I suspect this is Google's intention, at least for now. It's basically fancy twitter. It doesn't have much in the way of personal communication mechanisms (although huddle was weird and I'm not sure why they thought anybody would use it).
I'd be interested to see what they define as "daily engagement," for it's a fairly ambiguous term. Clicking on a personalized result in Google search is far different than actively going to the G+ home page and engaging in a conversation. Likewise, starting a hangout is far different than merely +1-ing a foreign page on the internet.
Although all of these actions interact with G+, only few are true metrics of social network success. The key is to drive _social_ interaction, to be the #1 resource of where you friends and family interact. I think G+ still has a wall to climb in that sense.
Similar questions should be raised regarding all other companies boasting their engagement rates. Hit a site with Facebook widhets and comments? Do they consider that engagement? shrug
Google+ will be successful because it attracts meaningful conversations and motivated users. It took the best from Twitter and Facebook and added its own flair, making it the most contagious, fun and informative social network I have ever participated in.
True that, particularly on the meaningful conversation side of things. Like many, I initially approached G+ as a kind of Facebook. I focused on basically friends, coworkers, acquaintances - personal relationships developed through assorted means. That was neat in having a replacement for my Facebook account, but I kept on hearing about noteworthy commentary being posted via links to G+ on hn, reddit, etc so I started exploring with new non-friend circles.
After branching out to my immediate interest areas (tech), a little later I ended up adding Philip Plait (bad astronomy guy), Fraser Cain and other sciencey/astronomy folks. The amazing Hangouts that these folks do a number of times/week makes me feel really lucky to have access to such a resource. Certainly having some degree of access to experts in assorted fields is nothing new thanks to the internets, but G+ has, in my view, made such interactions far more accessible.
I can only imagine that there are other groups doing awesome things with G+ who I have not yet found.
The photographers seem to be having a strong community on G+ and G+ is the place where us amateurs can be exposed to their awesomeness. And talented those people are.
In the last few months, I have noticed many HN posts linking to Google+ posts. G+ is becoming a strong blogging platform and because Google is pushing rel=author so hard, soon it won't matter WHERE you wrote it (domain), it will matter WHO wrote it (author). That's why I see A+ bloggers adopting G+ soon.
I'd see'em in Google-themed subreddits like r/android pretty often which makes sense, but in regard to the more popular subreddits, they pop up every now and then in r/programming, r/atheism, etc. kn0thing submitted a post to r/technology the other day in regard to his plans to speak to the committee on SOPA and PIPA. I think I ended up following him on G+ after that one. I also vaguely recall the 'Comcast using tricks to raise rates' post also getting a fair amount of attention from r/technology
That said, I'm pretty sure it's possible to do a reddit search for submitted links to a particular domain if you're looking for more details. (I'm a little hesitant to link directly to a bunch of reddit pages here. Don't want to step on anyone's toes.)
Anyway, it's not like G+ posts are exceeding imgur links or anything. It just seems that based on my completely non-scientific observations, I'm seeing G+ posts linked more frequently than previously (or perhaps I'm just looking out for them more often ;)).
I'm almost surprised the number is so low, given how difficult it is to log into a Google Account and even run a web search without accidentally stumbling onto one of the prolific set of lead-ins it has now.
This will most likely continue to happen in the form of tighter integrations, continually boosting the engagement number, until an antitrust lawsuit causes G+ to split off into it's own company. I suppose the bet is that by then, there will be enough momentum for network effects to take care of the rest. Like Google+ or not, it's a pretty nifty, calculated strategy.
Mere integration isn't sufficient to justify an antitrust action. There needs to be a trust (monopoly) involved somewhere. There is, of course, and right now that monopoly is named "Facebook". Things would have to change radically for antitrust regulators to become interested.
Facebook may be on the social front...but if you look at it from a different angle, the fact that data is being collected on all fronts, from search, email, video, social and DNS, Google is the single monopoly.
That's semantic creep. The grandparent post was about antitrust law. Antitrust interprets a "monopoly" in the market sense. It's true that you can attach other meanings to the word and gain new insights from interesting discussion, but that has no bearing on the ability of the DoJ to bring antitrust suits against google.
A monopoly is defined as a seller with no competitors (in their market). Facebook would be a monopoly if its user were _forced_ to log in to facebook, use its software, or give it money.
Ergo facebook is not a monopoly.
It's ironic that I would have to define monopoly here - I personally have a great deal of distaste for facebook's actions. In my opinion they engage in highly deceptive business practices. Their users are unaware of the damage to their privacy stemming from facebook's actions.
But unethical or distasteful practices do not imply a monopoly. Google does not have a monopoly either - if you prefer not to use their services, use Bing or Baidu or DuckDuckGo ...
I understand that facebook and google embed javascript on other pages. So download the requestpolicy firefox addon. Or disable javascript. And cookies. I think you can see my point: you, the customer, can spend your money and your bandwidth (= money) other places if you prefer.
Many people and businesses have no choice but to use Windows. It's nearly impossible to buy a computer without Windows, especially if you're picky about configurations. Even if the choice exists (Apple), switching involves considerable costs: buying all new hardware, moving to different application software, retraining personel, dealing will legacy and proprietary file formats.
In contrast, moving to a different search engine is easy and free. There are no barriers to switch.
Facebook may not be a monopoly, but on the other hand, that's not a necessary condition for antitrust laws to kick in. A dominant position on the market is enough.
I wonder which product is really driving G+ adoption. If Google+ is opted in by default on Android now* that would account for almost all of the growth in G+.
* I think this is the case with ICS, less sure if it's the case for the Gingerbread phones that form the vast majority of Android devices sold.
(UPDATE: We've confirmed what some readers suspected: the 60 and 80 percent figures refer to users accessing any Google service—whether it be search, Gmail or something else—while logged in to their Google account, and do not necessarily indicate actual usage of Google+ each day or week. The 90 million figure refers not to active users, but to the total number of people who have created Google+ accounts.)
If Google launched a web-based Notepad clone and pushed it like they push Google+, it'd probably get just as many users. More importantly, the users might actually find the app useful.
I view it as a non-entity and I am a large user of social networks. I spent 30 minutes building circles and gave up when nobody posted. It doesn't add enough to be useful. Its not Friendster yet, but....
I'm really starting to like G+. I added the HN circle so now my stream is full of tech stuff. I may never even add personal friends, just let all the baby talk stay on Facebook.
RTFA:
"Google’s Larry Page has announced that Google+ now has 90 million users globally, doubling the number from three months ago. Page also said that G+ has a 60% ‘daily engagement’ rate. This came as a part of Google’s Q4 and fiscal year 2011 financial reports."
The fact that they're starting to throw up weasel words tells me that the "60% daily engagement rate" figure might not be exactly what you think it means. I'd be much more interested if they'd tell us exactly how many people log in and at least view their timeline every day. I'm not interested in how many people hit personalized search every time they do a search because they happen to be logged in.
Oh, snap. The reported death(s) of G+ seem to be greatly exaggerated.
I know some folks are saying there's a lot of fake accounts on G+ but I think that's true for the same percentage, if not more across all social networks.
None of my friends are on Google+. But there are tons of really smart people that I don't know personally (although I wish I did), who post lots of great content for me to read, and consider and discuss. With this personal experience in mind, I believe the 60% are using it as a content discovery platform, not so much as a social network.. sort of like another Reddit/Twitter