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I'm happy for Google and it's success, but everyone's measuring the wrong statistics. Raw number of users isn't nearly as important as their interconnectedness

I'm happy for Google and it's success, but everyone's measuring the wrong statistics. Raw number of users isn't nearly as important as their interconnectedness. Facebook started at one school, moved to three, etc. Each new user was likely to encounter a number of people they knew using the service, and there was an instant value proposition for them. I don't get that sense from G+. Sure, there's millions of nerds on it, but I don't know many of them. Currently I have 3 real life friends using it, and a few people from school. The rest of my interaction with G+ consists of following people like Matt Cutts and Guido van Rossum. Don't get me wrong, that's an awesome feature, but I don't see it as being sufficient to bring the NORPs on board. I wouldn't be surprised to see G+'s growth plateau after the early adopters have all gotten their invites, until there's some value proposition for the current facebook/twitter crowd. On a tangentially related note, how awesome is it that there are 10 million early adopters out there?

andrewjshults 15y ago
While I've seen the usual batch of tech early adopters, I've also seen a large number of high school and college friends that are not in tech who have accounts and are using them. Granted, it's nowhere near the facebook level of penetration but my actual interactions with friends on it have been of higher quality (I barely use facebook so that may have a strongly confounding effect on my results), largely because I can control who different types of content goes to. I think the pervasiveness of G+ is going to go a long way in continuing to drive adoption and use. Facebook feels like a place I go to waste time, while G+ is always there when I'm inside of anything google (and between gmail, calendar and search that's at least once or twice an hour).
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  That's my hope as well. I can see G+ actually being a productivity enchancer, rather than destroyer like facebook. YMMV on the non-geek uptake. I have family members in tech who are all over facebook, twitter, linkedin, and whatnot who still haven't signed up for an account on G+, so we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.
pnathan 15y ago
By the time, I got onto G+, almost all my friends were on there. Yes, we're all geeks. I'm more than happy to keep it geeky over there!

andrewjshults 15y ago

While I've seen the usual batch of tech early adopters, I've also seen a large number of high school and college friends that are not in tech who have accounts and are using them. Granted, it's nowhere near the facebook level of penetration but my actual interactions with friends on it have been of higher quality (I barely use facebook so that may have a strongly confounding effect on my results), largely because I can control who different types of content goes to. I think the pervasiveness of G+ is going to go a long way in continuing to drive adoption and use. Facebook feels like a place I go to waste time, while G+ is always there when I'm inside of anything google (and between gmail, calendar and search that's at least once or twice an hour).

redthrowaway 15y ago
That's my hope as well. I can see G+ actually being a productivity enchancer, rather than destroyer like facebook. YMMV on the non-geek uptake. I have family members in tech who are all over facebook, twitter, linkedin, and whatnot who still haven't signed up for an account on G+, so we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

pnathan 15y ago

By the time, I got onto G+, almost all my friends were on there. Yes, we're all geeks. I'm more than happy to keep it geeky over there!