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Larry Page: Google+ now has 90 million users globally
- badclient 15y agoIf 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.
- luckyisgood 15y agoGoogle+ 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.
- creativityland 15y agoNot sure if sarcasm, or being serious.
- luckyisgood 15y agoMe? Serious.
- joejohnson 15y agoI know, it's just genius what they did with Google+. It's the best social network ever!
- joejohnson 15y agoI know, it's just genius what they did with Google+. It's the best social network ever!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- potater 15y agoTrue 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.
- luckyisgood 15y agoThe 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.
- potater 15y agoOoh, I heard about photographers taking to the network, but forgot to check it out. I'll give it a look. Thanks for the heads up!
- creativityland 15y agoI haven't seen a single Google+ link yet on the more popular subreddits, where did you find them?
- potater 15y ago
- turing 15y agoListening to the earnings call. Did Larry just say that 60% of members use the service daily, with 80% engaging at least once a week? Wow.
- EwanToo 15y agoHow many are "engaging" by doing a Google search while logged in, and seeing a Google+ result? Maybe I'm just getting cynical..
- waterlesscloud 15y agoI'm very very skeptical of that number. Perhaps the people I know are just atypical (non)users, but I sort of doubt it.
- gtzi 15y agoQuestion is, how many out of them actually use it.
- resnamen 15y agoRTFA: "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."
- creativityland 15y ago60% daily engagement rate including Google personalized search? ;)
- guywithabike 15y agoI think this is a completely legitimate question. 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.
- staunch 15y agoExactly. Without a definition of "daily activity" it's a meaningless stat.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- xxbondsxx 15y agoI'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. Let's not forget their average visit length: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/6a00d83451b36c69e20168e5695543970c-450wi.png?w=604 http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/6a00d83451b36c69e... I have a lot of hope for G+ but this reminds me of the premature "Mission Accomplished" banner.
- mladenkovacevic 15y agoI 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
- creativityland 15y agoAgreed. 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.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoAgreed. Pinterest, on the other hand, has the best "regular people" adoption I've seen since Facebook.
- _exec 15y agoLooks interesting..got an invite?
- ajross 15y agoThat 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.
- kingkawn 15y ago
- Aloisius 15y agoI'm shocked, just shocked by the speed of Google+ adoption. Who knew that leveraging a near monopoly by bundling your product could give you access to a new market?
- forgotusername 15y agoI'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.
- pork 15y agoThis 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.
- ajross 15y agoMere 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.
- creativityland 15y agoFacebook 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.
- ajross 15y agoThat'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.
- j45 15y agoOh, 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.
- j45 15y agoSo, downvoters, was it anything I said? :)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Hominem 15y agoI'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.
- creativityland 15y agoYes, but it is all relevant to who your friends are on Facebook. Maybe time to remove some friends on FB? ;) My stream on fb is fairly informative and useful.
- nextparadigms 15y agoA few more months and it will probably surpass Twitter. How many users does Twitter have about now? 120 million?
- ken 15y agoAccording to Wolfram Alpha, 200 million.
- mathattack 15y agoI 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....
- wbkang 15y agofrom http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/google-claims-90-million-google-users-60-active-daily.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+Featured+Content%29 http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/google-claims-90...: (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.)
- dotcoma 15y agoRemember the times when Google didn't have to brag about the small stuff?