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Guess 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 t

by ward 15y ago

Guess 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Or 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 ago
    I'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 ago
      I'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.
      - jsight 15y ago
        I've never used events or posting on other people's wall on Facebook. Those are Facebooks two remaining advantages, IMO. I know a lot of people use Facebook for messaging, but I would honestly prefer that they just email. I don't really see the advantage of a non-email email over just using email. Google+ email and chat integration are just fine. You don't have to manually put people into their own circles. If you share something, just start typing their name (instead of a circle name) and it will let you share with individuals instead of circles. It works the same way otherwise. I find the slowness surprising, actually. Whenever I've used + it always seems either the same or faster than Facebook. Perhaps this has to do with specific network environments or something? I have noticed that it takes a while for updates to propagate (caching, I guess) across to other users. That part is a little annoying at times.
      - mvgoogler 15y ago
        I'm on the G+ photos team. Do you have an example of a slow loading image? If you can send me a link I could take a look. Latency is definitely something we care about.
        fl3tch 15y ago
        Edit: Well wouldn't you know, this just happened: http://i.imgur.com/ESojw.png http://i.imgur.com/ESojw.png Typical of what I see. This is a fresh Firefox profile, no cache, no extensions. It's also not a network problem, since I don't see this on other sites, even other Google properties like search or Gmail. It's unique to G+
        mvgoogler 15y ago
        Thanks for the screenshot! Two quick follow-up questions: On that screenshot, it looks like it's the main profile picture and the profile picture thumbnails for the circles that are slow to load (but the images from the stream are loaded). Is that typically what you see, or is that just what happened in this case? Do have a sense for whether this happens more often when you're looking at profiles of people who are in a lot of circles (like Tim O'Reilly)? Thanks for your help.
clhodapp 15y ago
My own experience supports this. A lot of my friends have Google+ accounts but barely use them. However, once a critical mass of this sort of users exists, they should quickly "flash" to active users, as people realize that the bulk of their friends actually are on Google+.
patrickaljord 15y ago
I remember twitter used to have a retention rate of 30% in 2009 when it was starting to get popular, and it was probably less so before that https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+retention+rate+&qscrl=1 https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+retention+rate+&... I used to see lots of twitter dead accounts at that time too. If we apply this to google+, then it would be 18 million active users if the 60MM is to be believed. That being said, no numbers of active users have been announced so there is no way to know.
endtime 15y ago
I use Google+ and I find it much better than Facebook for my use cases. I actually get a decent number of comments on my posts (comparable to those on Facebook). They come from a smaller and more specific set of people, but they're also generally of higher quality.

by ward 15y ago

jsight 15y ago

I 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 ago
Or 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 ago
  I'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 ago
    I'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.
    - jsight 15y ago
      I've never used events or posting on other people's wall on Facebook. Those are Facebooks two remaining advantages, IMO. I know a lot of people use Facebook for messaging, but I would honestly prefer that they just email. I don't really see the advantage of a non-email email over just using email. Google+ email and chat integration are just fine. You don't have to manually put people into their own circles. If you share something, just start typing their name (instead of a circle name) and it will let you share with individuals instead of circles. It works the same way otherwise. I find the slowness surprising, actually. Whenever I've used + it always seems either the same or faster than Facebook. Perhaps this has to do with specific network environments or something? I have noticed that it takes a while for updates to propagate (caching, I guess) across to other users. That part is a little annoying at times.
    - mvgoogler 15y ago
      I'm on the G+ photos team. Do you have an example of a slow loading image? If you can send me a link I could take a look. Latency is definitely something we care about.
      - fl3tch 15y ago
        Edit: Well wouldn't you know, this just happened: http://i.imgur.com/ESojw.png http://i.imgur.com/ESojw.png Typical of what I see. This is a fresh Firefox profile, no cache, no extensions. It's also not a network problem, since I don't see this on other sites, even other Google properties like search or Gmail. It's unique to G+
        mvgoogler 15y ago
        Thanks for the screenshot! Two quick follow-up questions: On that screenshot, it looks like it's the main profile picture and the profile picture thumbnails for the circles that are slow to load (but the images from the stream are loaded). Is that typically what you see, or is that just what happened in this case? Do have a sense for whether this happens more often when you're looking at profiles of people who are in a lot of circles (like Tim O'Reilly)? Thanks for your help.

clhodapp 15y ago

My own experience supports this. A lot of my friends have Google+ accounts but barely use them. However, once a critical mass of this sort of users exists, they should quickly "flash" to active users, as people realize that the bulk of their friends actually are on Google+.

patrickaljord 15y ago

I remember twitter used to have a retention rate of 30% in 2009 when it was starting to get popular, and it was probably less so before that https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+retention+rate+&qscrl=1 https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+retention+rate+&... I used to see lots of twitter dead accounts at that time too. If we apply this to google+, then it would be 18 million active users if the 60MM is to be believed. That being said, no numbers of active users have been announced so there is no way to know.

endtime 15y ago

I use Google+ and I find it much better than Facebook for my use cases. I actually get a decent number of comments on my posts (comparable to those on Facebook). They come from a smaller and more specific set of people, but they're also generally of higher quality.