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Google+ passes 62 million users. Adding 625,000 new users per day.
- brador 15y agoUsers? yeah right. More like spammers and bots from the software I've seen on the blackhat forums. Spammers have learnt their lesson and now know age is a factor in deciding if it's a spam account or not and are getting in early and big.
- mmahemoff 15y agoI haven't heard that before. Wouldn't a real user be just as likely to join late (when a service has gone mainstream, bigged up by Oprah etc) as a spam account?
- vidarh 15y agoI think the point is to build up a large list of accounts to cycle through that have existed for a while and seen sporadic legitimate looking use, rather than having to use a new account when suddenly starting to churn out spam. A new account that immediately starts posting a lot is a big red flag. An old, active account that slowly ramps up posting volume is likely a lot harder to distinguish from a "real" user that is getting more active as the service gets bigger. So you slowly build up a big portfolio of accounts and keep them "warm", and then spread your spamming over a larger volume of accounts instead of trying to create new ones and pump out lots of spam faster than they can block you.
- felipemnoa 15y agoOther metrics can be added to detect a spammer. If one account never posts but then suddenly starts posting like crazy, that is a red flag.
- resnamen 15y agoIf there are spammers targeting G+, they must be doing a crappy job, because it hasn't even registered on my radar as a fairly active regular user.
- jsnell 15y agoG+ spam would probably be closer to blog spam than email spam. It'd be hard to get any noticeable volume of direct spam going from a single account given the asymmetric circle relations. But spam postings would still be useful for e.g. black hat SEO, or for making a Google account look more valid for the purposes of abusing other Google services.
- ward 15y agoGuess I'll state the question: How many of them actively use it? Yes, yes, before anyone jumps in with the "but you have to follow interesting people", I know that side of Google+. My question is more targetted at all those people that (had to) make an account for w/e reason, but just don't open it anymore. I can only assume they are included too, are there estimates to their numbers? Edit: I do use Google+, I just notice a lot of (seemingly?) 'dead' accounts.
- jsight 15y agoI agree... I see more dead accounts than live ones now. I don't think this service is in the success category at all at the moment. I still use it fairly actively, though.
- fl3tch 15y agoOr maybe they just aren't posting to you? A few months back I read the claim that there's twice as much private sharing as public.
- jsight 15y agoI've heard this argument (mostly from Googlers) before. I don't buy it though, as I occasionally (rarely now) see friends post things and get zero comments. The same comments will get tons of comments on Facebook. This thing has largely failed outside of tech circles and twitter style (celebrity) newsfeeds at the moment. Hopefully that will change, as I find it superior to Facebook in virtually every way.
- fl3tch 15y agoI'm curious, what are all the ways in which you find it superior? I agree that circles are better than Facebook friend lists, but G+ seems to lack some features that others find essential on Facebook, like event creation. I've heard a lot of people say that's the biggest reason they have a Facebook account. Also, there's no direct messaging system, at least that I'm aware of. FB messaging has basically replaced email for a lot of people. I suppose I could put someone into their own circle, but that seems rather inelegant. My biggest issue with it is the lag, which is ironic for a product by Google. Sometimes it takes 30+ seconds for images to load. This significantly affects the user experience, since I usually don't wait, I just move onto something else.
- timdorr 15y agoUsers are one thing, active users are another. How many posts are being made? Are they just signing up for these accounts and never coming back? There's a reason Facebook and Twitter quote active users when announcing how many people are actually using their products.
- brendano 15y agoYes. For example, the Facebook numbers are always number of people who've logged in at least once in the last 28 or 30 days (or something) -- I'm sure the G+ people are computing this internally. The fact they don't report it implies it may be a bit low?
- justincormack 15y agoOh but its just a google login, most people will have one. You need to measure views or posts...
- fpgeek 15y agoNot quite. There's a difference between Google accounts that are "switched on" for Google+ and those that are not. These days also you need to do is sign into Google+ with your Google account to flip the switch, but there is still a distinction.
- stonemetal 15y agoIf you are signed in to google for any reason(gmail, docs, etc.) and are a G+ user you are signed in to G+. They put a G+ specific notification area on the black bar across the top. I would hope active user meant something more than signed up and has checked their gmail account at least once in the past 28 days.
- potatolicious 15y agoIndeed. I know lots of people who signed up for G+ to check it out, I only know two people who still actively post to it. I just checked my news feed, and it's entirely filled with posts by celebs (famous photographers, web celebs, Google folks I follow, etc), and two posts by my actual friends. If this is at all representative, I suspect the percentage of active users to total users is pretty abysmal.
- kenjackson 15y agoI really don't want one company to control all of my services. I like that Google may have my email, MS/Google my search, and Facebook my social -- and that all three will have to learn to play together.
- alain94040 15y agoI was recently forced to create a Google+ account, which I have no intention of using for now. So I simply typed "follow me on twitter at <adr>" in my description. So people who bump into my profile know where to find me.
- kierank 15y agoWhat's the male/female split?
- jdp23 15y agothe most recent numbers i saw were about 2-1, unchanged since July
- bad_user 15y agoWhat I don't like about Google+ is that they already have a spam problem.
- resnamen 15y agoWhat does G+ spam look like?
- cheald 15y agoAll the Google+ hate sort of puzzles me. I absolutely love it. It's become my social media platform of choice, in fact. Maybe it's just that I have enough interesting people to read that it's worth it to me. I'm not sure. I've never been a fan of Facebook. I've had an account for years, but that's pretty much entirely for API testing. I can count the number of things I've posted to Facebook in the past year on one hand. Twitter, on the other hand, I really like. It's asymmetric, and lets me engage in casual conversation with people easily. Google+ is a great marriage between the two. Long-form posts, comment threads, rich media integration, topical conversation via hashtags, and both Twitter-style multicast (public) and more Facebook-style (circle- or individual-limited) conversation. I realize I sound like an ad, but that's not my intent. It just works for me. The complaint I see most often is "nobody's there". If you treat it as a publishing platform, rather than an RSS reader, it becomes a lot more attractive, and then that helps to solve the "nobody's there" problem as a side-effect.
- justincormack 15y agoI thought I would like it, and I do find some good content there, mostly blog length stuff. However I dont really want to blog on it, and prefer twitter for short stuff. I do see more g+ posts here too which reflects the good stuff.
- spodek 15y ago"It's become my social media platform of choice, in fact." Diaspora is my social media platform of choice for the freedom it provides. When it's easy I don't mind posting to other platforms through Diaspora, which I can with Facebook and Twitter. If someone created a way to post to Google+ from Diaspora, I would post to it from Diaspora also. (If such a way already exists, I'd love to hear of it).
- aeontech 15y agoUnfortunately so far, the G+ API is read-only. There is no way to write any third party tool to post to it. It would be interesting to hear from someone with internal knowledge on what their actual plans on opening it up are.
- WhatsHisName 15y agoI just can't get past the feeling that Google+ violates my privacy. I've started using Facebook which I ultimately regret because it's invasive, too controlling, and has stupidity embedded in it. In the end these kinds of forums are the only ones I find worthwhile anyway. I don't care what my real friends think about what I like, and don't want anyone else I know to judge me. Why am I letting people I don't even know control the way I express myself to my friends anyway?
- kzrdude 15y agoI use facebook. Why am I not registering for G+? Well: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!
- badclient 15y agoGoogle can try and play stupid as much as they want by reporting signups and not actives but I'm glad it isn't fooling the HN crowd. Facebook long changed the game by reporting actives. Since, startups like twitter and foursquare have followed suit by reporting actives. It is very apparent what google's refusal to report actives means.
- jsnell 15y agoGoogle is reporting nothing in this case. It's some dude trying to deduce the user count from other information.
- starnix17 15y agoDon't forget, if you create a Google account you automatically have a Google+ account. I made a new Gmail account for my mom a few days, now she has a Google+ account too but I doubt she'll ever touch it.
- akcreek 15y agoI have a Google account I use for analytics, webmaster tools, etc... and Google is always prompting me to turn Google+ on as well. It wasn't automatic with my account. I had the account before Google+ existed though so maybe it is just automatic with new signups?
- sirn 15y agoYes. You have to manually cancel the Google Profile and Google+ account for new signups.
- RexRollman 15y agoThat's lame. People should only have a Google+ account if they actually want it. I personally find this behavior distasteful and Google is obviously using it to artificially inflate their numbers.
- yoklov 15y agoWhy would Google want to fragment its userbase by having to separate classes of accounts, Google+ accounts and regular ol' Google accounts. That would be lamer.
- matmann2001 15y agoThose numbers sound great, but they don't really mean anything unless those users are contributing content and establishing a community within Google+. It takes all of 10 seconds to become a member, but Google+ needs a better way of encouraging new users to complete their profile information, make posts, and add their friends.
- easy_rider 15y agoMaybe the new Facebook timeline is to blame? :)
- RexRollman 15y agoI would love to join Google+ but they still haven't fixed the pseudonym issues. Twitter it is, I guess.
- zem 15y agoyeah, i joined and it's technically a really excellent platform, but i find it hard to have any real attachment to it without full pseudonym support.
- Steko 15y agoOk so his data shows 50 mil users Dec 1 and 62 mil users Dec 27 which is easy to calculate at 460k users a day not 625K. I'm more then willing to believe that there were 625K+ users for Dec 25 and 26 though to extrapolate users for all of 2012 based on xmas day and the day after xmas sign ups of 2011 is absurd. Interest in google plus is fairly flat: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22google%20plus%22%2Creddit%2Clinkedin%2Cflickr%2Cgoogle%2B&date=today%203-m&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22google%20plus%22... For comparison's sake that is 10% of twitter and twitter is 10% of facebook.
- ______ 15y agoIt's fascinating how periodic searches for LinkedIn are -- peaking right before each quarter ends. Looks like a lot of people are looking for news jobs right around then.
- tednaleid 15y agoAre you looking at the graph in the post you replied to? I see it as weekday spikes (while people are at work, maybe recruiters?) and weekend slumps. Not quarterly spikes. Though I agree that the pattern is fascinating :).
- edpark1 15y agoI wonder if Facebook is becoming the new Myspace in terms of quality of content shared. With Google you have the sense that some people are using it to replace their blogs and possibly connecting on a more professional level whereas Facebook is more about catching up with others and sharing random thoughts/opinions via short messages and likes/dislikes. The first one to have a tighter integration with Twitter and has the most adoption among Twitter users will win. Linkedin --> Google + <--- Facebook Also another thing, Google App users are already opted in by default and with more and more companies using Google Apps, that only reinforces the more professional connections.
- pgtart 15y agoa blog ?.. Thats something from 1980, not that facebook/google solved what's the new thing far from that.
- rabble 15y agoMy question is what happened the week of September 18th? That was when Google+ went from flatlining to a huge jump in growth, then followup growth. Anybody know? My guess is something to do with android pushing folks to sign up, or maybe them pushing it through gmail or google logins. Something changed and they restarted the growth curve with a big spike.
- murz 15y agoI think the spike you are seeing correlates to the transition from a "field trial" (invite-only) product, to a public product. This is the blog post announcing open signups and it is dated September 20th: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-92-93-94-95-96-97-98-99-100.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-92-93-94-95-96...
- Semiapies 15y agoI think the big sign of growth for G+ is its growing pains. Hangout and other components simply don't perform as well as they did when it was a brand-new service.
- tszming 15y agoWould be more interesting if Google can provide more meaningful data like facebook: https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics >> More than 800 million active users >> More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day >> On average, more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day etc.
- azakai 15y agoVery happy to hear Google+ is doing well. I don't do much social networking myself, but serious competition for Facebook is a very good thing.
- joshmlewis 15y agoI guess those TV commercials are helping.
- spiredigital 15y agoGoogle+'s killer feature (at least from what I've seen) is Circles. Not being able to easily control who sees what on Facebook is the reason I don't post more personal content to it. Being able to easily control what I share and with who - like I do in the real world - would make me 10x more likely to become an active participant on a social network. It might be time to actually sign up for an account....
- ww520 15y agoCircle sounds good in theory but it's a pig to use in practice. Sign up and see for yourself.
- rkon 15y agoProfiles? Sure. Users? No... not even close. It's actually rather telling when the only way to make Google+ sound popular is to count meaningless automatic signups.
- atularora 15y agoIs there any correlation between G+ new users and new Android activations? One is 625K and the other is 700K per day. Just curious.
- MarkMc 15y agoOne measure of the relative popularity of Google+ and Facebook is to compare the number of 'likes' with '+1s' on a popular page. For example, on the following page there are currently 64 '+1s' and 260 'likes': http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142011.html?campaign_id=rss_topStories# http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142... By this measure, Google+ is at 25% of Facebook. I remember when Google+ went into 'anybody-can-use-it' mode a few months ago it was only around 5%. This suggests Google+ is doing quite nicely, thank you. But perhaps it is just showing how Google+ is becoming more popular with spammers...?
- duckfruit 15y agoTo be fair, the comparison might not be entirely accurate since it is possible to 'plus one' something while just being a gmail/youtube user -- without necessarily being an active google+ user.
- vatrai 15y agohttps://twitter.com/#!/arunagw/status/151969750518468608 https://twitter.com/#!/arunagw/status/151969750518468608
- vatrai 15y agohttps://twitter.com/#!/arunagw/status/151969750518468608 https://twitter.com/#!/arunagw/status/151969750518468608
- dkhenry 15y agoI find it funny that people on HN knock Google+ because of the lack of people on it. While at the same time using HN instead of digg or reddit. Why are you drawn to Hacker News over the "big" link sites. Wouldn't by your own logic you use those sites since they have so many more people. Could there be something enticing about a smaller product with higher quality that you find enjoyable. Not to say we should promote group think here as there is place for intelligent dissent, but its very ironic to use one smaller higher quality alternative while vocally rejecting another.
- pgtart 15y agoi like neither facebook or google+ in holland there is hives, much better. I'm confused why these big players, make such horrible user interfaces to manage friend contacts, it is really puzzling me. (try to find back your video's on facebook) (try to manage permissions) (try to upload, try to ...etc etc etc.. its all awfull)