9 ms·
Google+ grows 43% in June
- brudgers 14y agoI'm on Google+ because I have a Gmail account. I'm on Linkedin (and Facebook) because they offer value.
- muhfuhkuh 14y agoThe irony is that most people use Facebook (and LinkedIn) as glorified publicly-facing email accounts with automatic reply-to-all and attachments set to auto-open and display in-line. The only thing added is a rudimentary voting system.
- tptacek 14y agoI use Facebook to share and chat about photos. I use LinkedIn for recruiting. I use neither as "publicly facing email accounts". At some level, any application can be described as "forms with some text inputs and some submit buttons".
- muhfuhkuh 14y ago"I use Facebook to share and chat about photos." Which I'm sure you used to do in email. Smaller circle, same user task. "I use LinkedIn for recruiting." I still use email sometimes for that. Smaller circle, same user tasks (attaching resumes, getting contact info for screenings, planning meet and greets). Actually, it was Monster.com + email, so yeah, I guess LinkedIn replaced those.
- tptacek 14y agoYou can easily do HN via email too; it's called a mailing list.
- muhfuhkuh 14y agoDefinitely. But that's the thing. GP said he only has G+ because he has GMail, but uses those other email workalike interfaces because they are superior products. Just pointing out that they work in strikingly similar ways to email.
- freehunter 14y agopublicly facing email accounts I believe the argument was that posting a picture is analogous to emailing that picture to your friends, and commenting on that picture is the same as hitting "reply to all" on that email. It's the same behavior, presented in a different format.
- saraid216 14y ago> The only thing added is a rudimentary voting system. I feel obligated to take issue with your characterization of Likes as voting of ... any kind. Or were you referring to something else? I'm not an FB expert.
- mhurron 14y agoWait, you have a G+ page, space, whatever automatically because you have a gmail account? Is there a way to get rid of that?
- mvgoogler 14y ago> Wait, you have a G+ page, space, whatever automatically because you have a gmail account? No - you have to opt in. > Is there a way to get rid of that? If you want to disable G+ on your account (which will also remove your G+ profile), you can go to the "Google+" section of your Google account settings page (https://www.google.com/settings/plus https://www.google.com/settings/plus). At the bottom there is a section labelled "Disable Google+".
- brudgers 14y agoWhen the most obvious option for avoiding a popup each time one accesses Gmail is joining Google+, it's a bit misleading to call it opting in.
- mvgoogler 14y agoIf you'are getting a "join Google+" pop-up every time you access Gmail then there is something wrong. That is definitely not the behavior I see on my alternate Gmail account which is opted out of Google+.
- alan_cx 14y agoNot for me. Nothing on that link even mentions google+. I have looked several times as I know I'm a dopey twit and often miss the blinding obvious, but I cant see it!! Regional difference?
- mvgoogler 14y agoNo - it just means you haven't opted in to Google+. To check - I just created a test gmail account and opted out of Google+. The Google+ section disappeared from my account settings page, which makes sense. I don't work on the sign-up/opt-out flow side of things, but AFAIK the policy should be basically the same everywhere.
- zht 14y agothose numbers seem really really low for Facebook and Youtube.
- nostromo 14y agoThey are US only
- taylodl 14y agoNice try. I have to sign up for Google+ to read on article about Google+? If this is the dodgy tactics used to drive up usage numbers then Google+ must not be offering any intrinsic value. As for now, LinkedIn is providing me greater value. Actual value, without gimmicks.
- espeed 14y agoYou can't view the post? I can view it without signing in, using incognito mode. Regardless, the post is by Morten Myrstad, who works at Kontxt, not a Google employee.
- mullingitover 14y agoI've noticed that viewing G+ posts on a mobile device requires me to log in, but not with a standard OSX/windows device. Pretty infuriating.
- rhizome 14y agoYou probably have a Google account in some way, then. I've noticed that visiting a Google Groups article prompts me for a login, which doesn't happen if I delete their cookies. It's a sneaky ploy to keep your session time up.
- glimcat 14y agoGiven the way Google has been using high-pressure onboarding through several of their existing customer bases, I'm not surprised. And "visitors" likely counts people who got linked to a single post.
- jsavimbi 14y agoIt's akin to a grocer refusing cash and instead only accepting payments made with their branded store card, for the customer's benefit. I'm surprised there hasn't been a legal challenge to this.
- taligent 14y agoNot sure why you have been downvoted. What Google is doing is very much reminiscent of what got Microsoft into so much trouble. Using a monopoly in one area to extend into another.
- bagacrap 14y agowhat area does Google have a monopoly in? Surely not search, email, or the browser. MS wasn't just cross-marketing, it was bundling IE and setting it as default which was unfair competition given that getting netscape required a lot more work (knowledge of the alternative, pre-broadband download and install). That plus bullying OEMs into unfavorable contracts. It's a poor analogy because Google doesn't own the web platform, and it's incredibly easy to switch services (just change your bookmarks).
- jsavimbi 14y ago> and it's incredibly easy to switch services Not when you have your entire team/company using gmail as a paid service. And when you factor in the part about the user being the product in social networking, basically you're forcing a paying customer of one product to become a revenue stream in another. Monopolies find themselves in trouble over this all time, just like when a customer service agent from your credit card company or local energy conglomerate passes you onto a sales rep from a third party without your knowledge. It's how they scam the old, ignorant and uninformed. tl;dr: you cannot change your bookmarks when you have no other options.
- programminggeek 14y agoYes, but I know dozens of people on LinkedIn. I know one active Google+ user and he's a bit of a Google fanboy to begin with. None of the non-techie people I know use Google+ or even mention it at all.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoThat's a good point. I don't recall the last time I saw a non-techie even mention G+.
- stellar678 14y agoI think G+ is going to worm its way in by offering add-ons that actually draw people in. The two major examples for me are Hangouts and the fact that G+ posts from 'important' people appear in Google News rollups about a particular story. Hangouts are really the only reason I've ever seen a non-techie use G+, and they work really well. People seem to try Skype and then realize that there are weird rules about having to pay if you want group video chat, so people hop over to G+ and it just works. And the news thing seems really interesting to me because it seems to highlight provocative things said by public personalities and then lets everyone with a Google account join the discussion as 'part of Google plus'. That seems like something that could get pretty sticky.
- creativityland 14y agoI'm also seeing more google results to G+ pages instead of the wikipedia page when searching for names, famous people, topics, places and so on. Coincidence?
- smacktoward 14y agoIf not coincidence, an anti-trust suit waiting to happen...
- stellar678 14y agoAre you seeing them as organic search results, or as "social search" features added into the mix? I can't say I've seen a lot of G+ pages as organic results, but they do seem to feel free to inject links to social media profiles when they're related in some way to a search result.
- simonsarris 14y agoWow. Lots of impressions here. MySpace is so small now! And shrinking! Let us never forget that history. Tumblr and pinterest are adding a lot fewer users than I thought. Gosh just look at the page. Google+ looks very clean and beautiful compared to Facebook these days. I'm reminded of when everybody used to say "Facebook looks very clean and beautiful compared to MySpace these days". Google has a big leg up here as Google+ ads can always be less intrusive and more relevant than Facebook ones. They can also afford to be cleaner by simply not making much (if any) money off of Google+ itself, just on the fact that it gets you into the google ecosystem. One thing that really bothers me about new Google web properties is that Google made this browser, Google Chrome, with a search functionality that highlights the matched words in orange on the scrollbar. Then they went and broke this feature on every single scrollbar possible by using custom scrollbars on every Google web property except Google search itself. How silly! --- Back to the topic at hand. I love the format of Google+ compared to Facebook. It sits between blog and social network, and long-form posts and answers seem much more natural and acceptable on G+ than on Facebook. Think about it. Lots of people link to Google+ posts here. Nobody links to the equivalent Facebook thing, wall posts. (And extremely few people use Facebook "notes" which were an attempt to fill that gap and have falled by the wayside.) I think this is one of the most telling things of all. I think Google+ has great opportunity for it to mature into more than just a social network, but a social network + blog for those who cant be bothered to make (and visit!) traditional blogs + interactive press release platform (important for both companies and users). I don't know if G+ will "win" any long term battle, but I do hope that when social networks mature into more refined, less annoying versions of themselves, they will look more like G+ than like Facebook or MySpace. I think the trend is clear, anyway.
- rhizome 14y agoTumblr and pinterest are adding a lot fewer users than I thought. Both of them are terrible on mobile.
- bjcy 14y agoThe recently released Tumblr app for iPhone is not too shabby at all and is hopefully a step in the right direction for Tumblr on mobile. On the flip side, the Facebook mobile experience is pretty terrible as well, but Facebook already has quite a large (and growing) user base already, so I wonder if mobile user experience is as important to growth as is existing, for lack of a better word, penetration. EDIT: Just noticed this line from the post: "The Compete numbers are US only and desktop only."
- vessenes 14y ago... But far less valuable, so far.
- therealarmen 14y agoSigh. We're drawing conclusions from Compete again? I've said this before and I'll say it again; using Compete for quantitative traffic comparisons is flawed, particularly with social sites that utilize embeddable content. Their data has been proven wrong countless times. Until recently, Compete claimed Reddit (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com/) had less traffic than Digg (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/digg.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/digg.com/). I don't have anything against Google+. But lets hold off on the congratulatory praise until we're sure the growth is real.
- Trufa 14y agoAccording to compete Digg is bigger that Reddit and growing.
- vladd 14y agoNo, it's not bigger nor growing: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/digg.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/digg.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com/
- Trufa 14y agoMy apologies, I can't seem to put them side by side, but I'm pretty sure when I checked some time ago that was the case. I clearly isn't any more.
- jedberg 14y agoSeconded. Compete's numbers are just made up. I know for sure they are off by more than an order of magnitude for reddit (or at least were a year ago).
- Josh2600hz 14y agoMost of the traffic tracking on the web involves plugins (generally in the form of a toolbar). I don't know about you guys, but I haven't had a 3rd party toolbar in my browser interface in a long time. Compete, Alexa, etc. they're all tracking people who don't understand technology.
- fourstar 14y agoThe only person I know on Google+ is my brother who works there. It's a good product, but it'd be a lot nicer if more people I knew used it.
- hell0_th3r3 14y agooddly enough, thanks to the HN circle on g+, i actually enjoy using it.
- saraid216 14y agoI'm on Google+ because I'm not cool enough to say I only know one person on Google+.
- donniezazen 14y ago1. Google+ is a lot more open. I get to interact with variety of people through public posts. 2. I have gotten rid of RSS Reader and now get all updates on G+ and blog. One less thing to worry about. 3. Too many people make too many posts on Facebook. Circle on G+ is growing on me. 4. I like everything Google.
- taligent 14y ago2. Google+ doesn't replace RSS at all. 95% of feeds I read for example have no Google+ equivalent. 3. Then filter those people from your feed or trim down the number of posts they make. 4. Even the privacy violations and anti-competitive behavior so serious they are under multiple investigations ?
- donniezazen 14y agoI ditched RSS reader because it's a huge investment of time. I get all social media updates in G+. Most blogs would email you blog post. I have integrated all my RSS needs in programs I already use - G+ and Gmail. It is my own personal minimalist experiment.
- notatoad 14y ago> I have gotten rid of RSS Reader and now get all updates on G+ and blog i would love for g+ to make this more of a supported use case. right now it's a pretty terrible RSS reader, but it could be a great one. It would have been a much better plan than annoying all the google reader users with half-assed G+ integration.
- i0exception 14y agoIt would be interesting to know if their definition of an "Active Google+ user" has changed. Otherwise those stats don't mean a thing.
- KeyBoardG 14y agoThese numbers are showing G+ just a bit smaller than twitter traffic wise. I'm just not buying it.
- hk__2 14y agoCan we know the number of members instead of visitors ?
- JaggedJax 14y agoA likely cause for this that I haven't seen noted yet is that they are slyly directing people to G+ without the user even knowing. If you click on a Google Maps result to get the full information page, it's no longer a Google Maps page, it's a G+ page. These traffic numbers clearly include lots of people who got to G+ in this manner.
- michaeledwards 14y agoYep, first noticed this a week ago. Lots of services redirecting into G+. Definitely going to skew the numbers WRT the concept of active vs passive growth.
- sp332 14y agoI rarely use G+ for the actual plus.google.com site. Instead, I add interesting or helpful people to various circles, and they augment my regular search results. But before you do that you might want to follow these tips for dealing with the random people showing up in your chat contacts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3472283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3472283 and flooding your "stream" https://plus.google.com/u/0/115948050407884269063/posts/Nd61YC5CbHJ https://plus.google.com/u/0/115948050407884269063/posts/Nd61...
- grandalf 14y agogmail was already larger than linked in, and google can just flip a switch to "join" gmail users to google plus. How is this metric not BS?
- mtkd 14y agoHow does he define a 'visit'? It's a vague concept now - from an ISP perspective hitting a page with G+ (or T or FB) button on it when signed-in takes down a 'visit' sized payload. When I +1 a page using Chrome Extension - is that a visit? Same with mobile apps - what's a mobile 'visit' - an API GET?
- robert_nsu 14y agoI'd like to know also. I mean, all this post says to me is "Google+ gets more traffic than LinkedIn". That isn't much of a feat when you consider Google integrating G+ into searches, the use of browser extensions, etc.
- obtu 14y agoIt's labelled "visitor", which is even more bogus (most measures might discriminate browsers, cookies, or IPs, which adds systemic errors in both directions). According to jcampbell1, this is requests per domain from a traffic sample intercepted by ISPs, which means that Facebook like buttons and Google +1 buttons dominate. All we have is a 47% or so change in how many of those ISP logs contain +1 buttons.
- gfodor 14y agoDriving first time visitors doesn't mean anything for a social network unless they have retention. Show me that Google+ visitors return to the site regularly and I'll start to think this is more than just measuring the size of your car's engine to determine its top speed. Anecdotal evidence tells me otherwise -- there are tons of people on G+, but nobody uses it.
- EricDeb 14y agoFacebook has been putting a lot more ads in the newsfeed lately. I find it irritating because I can't just avoid them like I do with the ads on the right! These types of actions may lead more users to Google+
- MattSayar 14y agoSomewhat off-topic, but this has been bugging me for years: for countries that use , instead of . in decimal numbers, how do they pronounce it? ie For the number 12.3 million, I could say "twelve point three million" or "twelve dot three million." For 12,3 million, do you say "twelve comma three million"?
- vibrunazo 14y agoHere in Brazil we do say "twelve comma three million", even tho our word for "comma" is much harder to say than our word for "dot". But since everyone says it, it just sounds natural anyway.
- MattSayar 14y agoThanks for the insight. One more thing I can't figure out based on your reply is: how do you differentiate a decimal number from a list of numbers? For example, consider the list: 12.3, 7.6, 3.2 It's easy to see the three different numbers. But otherwise, wouldn't it be: 12,3, 7,6, 3,2 And how would you dictate that? "twelve comma three comma seven comma six comma..."?
- vibrunazo 14y agoThose would be grammatically correct around here, I don't think I ever seen anything like that in the real world. In actual math classes people will usually just put parenthesis around numbers: (12, 3), (7, 6), (3,2). Sometimes people will actually replace the comma for the dot to avoid confusion (there's no hard rule set on stone, as long as you're being clear, it's ok). Sometimes people will just space them differently like you did and hope that's clear enough. For dictating, I don't think anyone would dictate the commas between numbers, you would just space them when speaking "twelve comma three.... seven comma six". If you think that's confusing. It's funny to know that we often also use the dot as a multiplication sign. So "12.3,7" actually means "twelve multiplied by 3.7" in english. Btw I'm curious, does other countries also use dot for multiplication or is it only us?
- seanconaty 14y agoA less interesting title would have been "Gmail is (and always was) larger than LinkedIn."
- myrstad 14y agoGmail is not integrated into gplus.google.com, so the numbers does not include gmail.
- jcampbell1 14y agoPlease keep in mind that Compete's data is from ISP data, so any http request to plus.google.com will count as a visitor. Which is why sites like, atdmt.com [1], have more "visitors" than google plus. I wouldn't trust compete's data for Google vs Linkedin because, the "uniques" could be coming from integrations with other google properties. [1] http://siteanalytics.compete.com/atdmt.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/atdmt.com/
- danhoc01 14y agoI would like to see how many people sign up for (and visit) Google+ due to the Instant Upload mobile photo feature. That's certainly my use case. I occasionally end up on Google+ from a search, but that's maybe once a month. I love Google+, but the only reason I specifically visit the site is to view my Instant Upload album.
- myrstad 14y agoThere are two sources confirming the same trend for Google+: Compete shows a growth of 43% - in monthly visitors - from May to June. Experian Hitwise shows a growth of around 35% - in monthly visits - in the same period. So I would think: Two analytical firms would hardly be wrong at the same time?
- bagacrap 14y ago(unless they use the same flawed methodology)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- welcomebrand 14y agoThe numbers are impressive but whenever I login to G+ my timeline is always like this: http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/239/d/f/forever_alone_by_foreveraloneplz.png http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/239/d/f/forever_alone...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- landonhowell 14y agoMorten Myrstad: Google's Meat Loaf doppelgänger.
- myrstad 14y agoWhich means?
- thekevan 14y agoMaybe, maybe not. I signed up for a throwaway Gmail account today and along with it came a Google+ account. I didn't click on the G+ link, but how may people have, only to never visit again?
- donbronson 14y ago"Larger" is a relative term. How many people pay monthly subscriptions to LinkedIn vs Google+ ?
- dbecker 14y agoI'm reminded that Google+ hasn't caught every time I log on. Between visits, I think I forget it even exists.
- saraid216 14y agoOdd. I've had to stop logging in as frequently because I keep finding new stuff to read there. And I keep having to mute posts I've commented on because the discussion moves too fast while I'm busy working.
- wutbrodo 14y agoI know exactly what you mean. I created a Twitter account a couple years ago but never really followed anyone; the few times I've logged on I've had a chuckle about how apparently Twitter has zero users and then forgotten about it.
- rickmb 14y agoSure. I have a Google+ account, two even, because they are both attached to my private and business Google accounts. Same goes for almost everyone I know, they all have at least one Google+ account. Only nobody I know, ever, ever uses Google+. I'm guessing many visits I make to Google applications whilst logged in count as Google+ usage. In reality, I haven't used it since after the first month or two, and that is pretty much reflected by the people around me.
- joe_the_user 14y agoI would vaguely say Facebook is a social network people actually want to be on. LinkedIn is a social network people might believe they need to be on. The two aspects are at least somewhat contradictory - a some significant portion of Facebook users are there to share things they wouldn't want an employer or potential customer to see whereas LinkedIn is fundamentally about selling one's self. If Google+, using a tighter identity and so-forth, happens to replace LinkedIn, that would be one way to not be in direct competition with Facebook. But also to guarantee a certain limit to growth (at least until everyone in the world has to sell themselves to potential employers and customers all the time - sadly real possibility but one that thankfully isn't appearing tomorrow).
- shasty 14y agoI just got out of the pool, otherwise Id be bigger than LinkedIn
- kayman 14y agoGoogle+ is okay for early adopters but as long as my family and friends are immersed in facebook, the G+ is a hard sell. But since most people use google, and google has unified login system, it is very easy to join google+. But actively use it? I don't know. Does the average user spend so many minutes on google+ everyday like they do on facebook? I don't think so.
- xenophanes 14y agoLet me know when Google+ actually works with my google apps email address. It says you have to enable it but I did enable it (terrible documentation/help to do so) and still could never get it to work with no useful error about what's wrong. It should just work by default. And if it's disabled, they should stop sending me emails asking me to sign up when they know perfectly well that they won't let me.
- obituary_latte 14y ago<sorry, meta> Is there a way to perhaps add revision history to mod-altered post titles? It's confusing and maybe even counter-productive in some cases when these ninja-edits happen. If there is a reason to change the title, let people know why. This adds to the available collective information as to what's acceptable or expected. Example: user w submits post with good intentions and unintentionally uses an x title which is not appropriate. Title is changed by mod and user checks history. User sees title wasn't appropriate because y. Next time, user thinks about it and tries harder to be more concise/accurate. Progress.
- mediocregopher 14y agoTo anyone late to the party, the original title of the post pointed out that G+ has apparently surpassed LinkedIn in usage, which might explain why many posts focus on LinkedIn as a site for comparison. The post was on the front-page with the original title for hours, I don't know why a mod decided that was the time to change it.
- danbmil99 14y agoTo quote Chelsea Handler (who doesn't get mentioned enough here on HN I think), G+ is a hot mess. It takes forever to load, it's confusing and opaque, and it simply doesn't, and probably won't, ever have the reach to be relevant.
- xentronium 14y agoI guess, the title was moderated again.
- adventureful 14y agoOnly 158 million of Facebook's 800x million users visit in any given month?
- josephagoss 14y agoThis is only US data, not global.
- bringonbob 14y agoI cannot believe no one has brought up the fact Google's Chrome web browser updates have been practicing evil, and thus the impressive growth. Essentially, it tricks people into signing up as a Google user. The push to corner a phenomena, which has reached its peak, by Google has been rather jaw dropping. The next generation is about to change everything and only a few will guess correctly what they will make the next must-have service will be.
- teflonhook 14y ago0.43 * 0 = 0 Google+'s traffic are misclicks and horse shit
- PaulHoule 14y agoBut who actually pays attention to it? The main consequence from Google Plus is that I see Kingsley Idenhen's face every time I do a query connected with the semantic web. For the life of me I can't figure out how to send people messages or get into a hangout or do anything with plus...
- miguelrochefort 14y agoAnd it's still unavailable on Windows Phone...