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Wow. 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 tha

Wow. 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 ago
Tumblr and pinterest are adding a lot fewer users than I thought. Both of them are terrible on mobile.
- bjcy 14y ago
  The 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."
- dsirijus 14y ago
  Pinterest is totally not transferable to small screen mobile devices. Its main point is to offer many images at a glance, which is impossible on small screen.
  - mrose 14y ago
    I encourage you to check out DRIFT[1]. You can browse the latest images for inspiration (á la Pinterest), and its responsive design scales from large-screen TVs to the smallest handheld devices. [1] http://drift.io http://drift.io
  - aw3c2 14y ago
    Wow, and I always thought Pinterest was a smartphone app like Instagram. (Not interested in it so I never bothered checking)
    - myko 14y ago
      There is a Pinterest iOS app but the web site is definitely the preferred way of using it. The phone app attempts to look like the web site but the layout doesn't transfer to the tiny iPhone screen very well and is not very nice to use because of this.
    - qq66 14y ago
      You should really check out Pinterest even if you aren't interested in the content -- the UI they have created is very slick and interesting.
shashashasha 14y ago
These numbers also seem to only be US numbers, so it might be hiding a lot of international growth in LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr (not to mention Facebook).
smacktoward 14y ago
Lots of people link to Google+ posts here. Nobody links to the equivalent Facebook thing, wall posts. That's a bit misleading, because one of the few places G+ has gotten traction is among developers, mostly in the Google ecosystem (go figure). That's a big and important ecosystem, so it's not shocking that people from there would post stuff that occasionally is of interest to HN. Facebook wall posts aren't used in the same way by the tech crowd -- probably mostly because they didn't work like blog posts or G+ posts until after G+ launched -- so they don't get HN links. But in other communities people definitely link to wall posts. I work in politics and it's not unusual to see a politico use their Facebook wall as a kind of proto-blog. (Sarah Palin, or some nameless flack on her team at least, is/was a master at this.) It then gets plenty of links from political media.
- primatology 14y ago
  Fair, but shorter posts are far more relevant in the politics game than the developer community. I think it's a content length issue, not an ecosystem issue. Most of those developers were/are on Facebook before they adopted G+, and we never saw wall posts linked to on HN.
- patrickaljord 14y ago
  > That's a bit misleading, because one of the few places G+ has gotten traction is among developers I remember the same about Twitter, most users were devs and rails devs at that. Doesn't mean G+ will be as successful as Twitter though.
vm 14y ago
First, the OA's comparison is meaningless. It focuses on vanity metrics rather than engagement or retention. A lot is written on that topic, so I won't repeat (see Tim Ferris: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/19/vanity-metrics-vs-actionable-metrics/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/19/vanity-metri...). This article is excellent optimization for link baiting. And it doesn't matter because most of these sites don't compete against each other. Each of these media sites has a different value prop, target demo and potential ARPU. For example, the value of a unique visitor on LinkedIn is way higher than on Tumblr, but it's a moot point because they aren't going after the same users (sure there will be some overlap, but that's in the same way that I visit HN and FB). Second, these stats are utterly wrong. Tumblr had 133M global uniques in that time, according to quantcast [1]. Pinterest had 45.8M US uniques around then [2]. And this completely ignores their quickly growing mobile traffic. Quantcast directly measures traffic by pixeling sites, so I trust their data over Compete in this case. [1] http://www.quantcast.com/p-19UtqE8ngoZbM http://www.quantcast.com/p-19UtqE8ngoZbM [2] http://www.quantcast.com/pinterest.com http://www.quantcast.com/pinterest.com
- Steko 14y ago
  Claims of G+'s amazing growth always looks silly when I run this bookmarked Insights: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CInstagram%2CFlickr%2CLinkedIn%2CPinterest&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CIns...
  - bsphil 14y ago
    Does "Google Plus" also cover "G+" and "Google+" and whatever other variation of the name there is? That's probably the last way I'd think of searching for statistics on it. Everything else you listed doesn't have any common aliases.
    - Steko 14y ago
      It doesn't appear to and I'm not exactly sure when + becomes viable in trends/insights although looking at it it looks like it's there for the last year or so. However if you double the result volume to account for Google Plus and Google+ it's still unimpressive. More importantly the curve is flat for both. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CGoogle%2B%2CG%2B%2CLinkedIn%2CPinterest&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CGoo...
slurgfest 14y ago
> MySpace is so small now! And shrinking! Let us never forget that history. So telling that you ask me not to forget MySpace's history, but Friendster is no longer mentioned - so I guess this means that we only remember one social network back ;)
- jackson71 14y ago
  Lest we forget SixDegrees.
- TillE 14y ago
  Friendster was never really a thing. MySpace was actually briefly popular, before Facebook opened up to everyone.
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    Friendster was definitely a thing, before MySpace. If we are going to have a quantitative argument there will need to be high quality numbers
jkn 14y ago
Speaking of the format, there is something that bothers me with the aesthetics of Google+, and I wonder if the feeling is shared by anyone on HN: It feels like there is too much emphasis on the interface. To exaggerate a bit, using all the bubble boxes and colored buttons feels like operating a Fisher Price toy. I would rather have a discreet and elegant interface that emphasizes the content. Maybe the mobile app is better in this respect...
- kinleyd 14y ago
  I have to agree with you: IMO G+ on the desktop is kludgy. For example it's use of the mouseover to highlight the option buttons on the left, as well the highlighted/unhighlighted color choice, are not intuitive or what we are used to, and the number of tabs on the top for your Circles should be much higher than the default 3 (excluding the More tab). The upshot is more mouse clicks are required to get around - that bugs me. Apart from that kind of peeve, I like G+ a lot and spend quite a bit of time there. I go to FB on occasion to see what my family and friends have posted but haven't really interacted much since engaging on G+.
fluidcruft 14y ago
> just on the fact that it gets you into the google ecosystem Don't forget that increased G+ use also should mean reduced eyeballs to the competition. If google gets its revenue from non-social, making social a monitization wasteland is a plus for them.
DigitalSea 14y ago
Lots of impressions and yet nobody but developers truly use it. MySpace isn't entirely dead are we forgetting that Justin Timberlake and Specific Media purchased the company not too long ago and have been working effortlessly in the background preparing to relaunch the website? If anyone should be worried it should be Google, Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest because many seem to forget MySpace possess a pretty large catalogue of indie and mainstream music, they have licence agreements with the big four record labels, have millions of videos... People love an underdog and I think MySpace is in a prime position when it relaunches. Comparing Tumblr or Pinterest to Google+ is like comparing a motorbike to a car, both forms of transport but each serves a different purpose. Google+ haven't won anything yet and I doubt they will, the landscape is going to be marginally different come 2013.
- wamatt 14y ago
  I thought Myspace already relaunched? Or are they going to do a re-relaunch?
  - DigitalSea 14y ago
    They are relaunching again. You're thinking of the failed relaunch when Rupert Murdoch bought it. MySpace sat stagnant for about a year before Specific Media and Justin Timberlake bought it for $35 million. They're currently in the process of relaunching with focus being on media not as just another social network to compete with Facebook. I can't reveal any information about it, but lets just say I'm pretty in the know of MySpace happenings and plans for the relaunch and a lot of people are going to be very surprised of the new direction.
- nl 14y ago
  working effortlessly in the background Not sure what you are trying to say here, but I'm pretty sure someone working effortlessly in the background isn't adding a lot of value. If anyone should be worried it should be Google, Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest because many seem to forget MySpace Wow, there is a bold prediction. the landscape is going to be marginally different come 2013 A much less bold prediction, and somewhat at odds with what you wrote earlier.
tobylane 14y ago
Facebook ads aren't relevant? I'm no ad expert but I heard of someone proposing by a very strictly relevant Facebook advert.
sandGorgon 14y ago
One of the biggest wins of Google+ is its mobile app. Light years ahead of Facebook - which is slow and a power hog (without focusing on their recent bugs) For the HN crowd, several influential releases/announcements are now using Google+ exclusively: Linus Torvalds, lennart poettering, Cyanogenmod, Ingo Molnar. They still havent gotten the public/private interaction model right yet. For example, Linus went on an extended rant complaining about Google Events being used by uninvited spammers (which then got fixed when Vic Gundotra took it up)
- kinleyd 14y ago
  The G+ mobile app is really nice to use. It surprises me that the G+ desktop team is lagging so much behind the mobile team.
viraptor 14y ago
> MySpace is so small now! And shrinking! Let us never forget that history. And let's see if they can pivot the business around media. Myspace TV is a quite interesting idea and I'm waiting to see what's going to happen with it...

rhizome 14y ago

Tumblr and pinterest are adding a lot fewer users than I thought. Both of them are terrible on mobile.

bjcy 14y ago
The 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."
dsirijus 14y ago
Pinterest is totally not transferable to small screen mobile devices. Its main point is to offer many images at a glance, which is impossible on small screen.
- mrose 14y ago
  I encourage you to check out DRIFT[1]. You can browse the latest images for inspiration (á la Pinterest), and its responsive design scales from large-screen TVs to the smallest handheld devices. [1] http://drift.io http://drift.io
- aw3c2 14y ago
  Wow, and I always thought Pinterest was a smartphone app like Instagram. (Not interested in it so I never bothered checking)
  - myko 14y ago
    There is a Pinterest iOS app but the web site is definitely the preferred way of using it. The phone app attempts to look like the web site but the layout doesn't transfer to the tiny iPhone screen very well and is not very nice to use because of this.
  - qq66 14y ago
    You should really check out Pinterest even if you aren't interested in the content -- the UI they have created is very slick and interesting.

shashashasha 14y ago

These numbers also seem to only be US numbers, so it might be hiding a lot of international growth in LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr (not to mention Facebook).

smacktoward 14y ago

Lots of people link to Google+ posts here. Nobody links to the equivalent Facebook thing, wall posts. That's a bit misleading, because one of the few places G+ has gotten traction is among developers, mostly in the Google ecosystem (go figure). That's a big and important ecosystem, so it's not shocking that people from there would post stuff that occasionally is of interest to HN. Facebook wall posts aren't used in the same way by the tech crowd -- probably mostly because they didn't work like blog posts or G+ posts until after G+ launched -- so they don't get HN links. But in other communities people definitely link to wall posts. I work in politics and it's not unusual to see a politico use their Facebook wall as a kind of proto-blog. (Sarah Palin, or some nameless flack on her team at least, is/was a master at this.) It then gets plenty of links from political media.

primatology 14y ago
Fair, but shorter posts are far more relevant in the politics game than the developer community. I think it's a content length issue, not an ecosystem issue. Most of those developers were/are on Facebook before they adopted G+, and we never saw wall posts linked to on HN.
patrickaljord 14y ago
> That's a bit misleading, because one of the few places G+ has gotten traction is among developers I remember the same about Twitter, most users were devs and rails devs at that. Doesn't mean G+ will be as successful as Twitter though.

vm 14y ago

First, the OA's comparison is meaningless. It focuses on vanity metrics rather than engagement or retention. A lot is written on that topic, so I won't repeat (see Tim Ferris: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/19/vanity-metrics-vs-actionable-metrics/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/05/19/vanity-metri...). This article is excellent optimization for link baiting. And it doesn't matter because most of these sites don't compete against each other. Each of these media sites has a different value prop, target demo and potential ARPU. For example, the value of a unique visitor on LinkedIn is way higher than on Tumblr, but it's a moot point because they aren't going after the same users (sure there will be some overlap, but that's in the same way that I visit HN and FB). Second, these stats are utterly wrong. Tumblr had 133M global uniques in that time, according to quantcast [1]. Pinterest had 45.8M US uniques around then [2]. And this completely ignores their quickly growing mobile traffic. Quantcast directly measures traffic by pixeling sites, so I trust their data over Compete in this case. [1] http://www.quantcast.com/p-19UtqE8ngoZbM http://www.quantcast.com/p-19UtqE8ngoZbM [2] http://www.quantcast.com/pinterest.com http://www.quantcast.com/pinterest.com

Steko 14y ago
Claims of G+'s amazing growth always looks silly when I run this bookmarked Insights: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CInstagram%2CFlickr%2CLinkedIn%2CPinterest&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CIns...
- bsphil 14y ago
  Does "Google Plus" also cover "G+" and "Google+" and whatever other variation of the name there is? That's probably the last way I'd think of searching for statistics on it. Everything else you listed doesn't have any common aliases.
  - Steko 14y ago
    It doesn't appear to and I'm not exactly sure when + becomes viable in trends/insights although looking at it it looks like it's there for the last year or so. However if you double the result volume to account for Google Plus and Google+ it's still unimpressive. More importantly the curve is flat for both. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CGoogle%2B%2CG%2B%2CLinkedIn%2CPinterest&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CGoo...

slurgfest 14y ago

> MySpace is so small now! And shrinking! Let us never forget that history. So telling that you ask me not to forget MySpace's history, but Friendster is no longer mentioned - so I guess this means that we only remember one social network back ;)

jackson71 14y ago
Lest we forget SixDegrees.
TillE 14y ago
Friendster was never really a thing. MySpace was actually briefly popular, before Facebook opened up to everyone.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  Friendster was definitely a thing, before MySpace. If we are going to have a quantitative argument there will need to be high quality numbers

jkn 14y ago

Speaking of the format, there is something that bothers me with the aesthetics of Google+, and I wonder if the feeling is shared by anyone on HN: It feels like there is too much emphasis on the interface. To exaggerate a bit, using all the bubble boxes and colored buttons feels like operating a Fisher Price toy. I would rather have a discreet and elegant interface that emphasizes the content. Maybe the mobile app is better in this respect...

kinleyd 14y ago
I have to agree with you: IMO G+ on the desktop is kludgy. For example it's use of the mouseover to highlight the option buttons on the left, as well the highlighted/unhighlighted color choice, are not intuitive or what we are used to, and the number of tabs on the top for your Circles should be much higher than the default 3 (excluding the More tab). The upshot is more mouse clicks are required to get around - that bugs me. Apart from that kind of peeve, I like G+ a lot and spend quite a bit of time there. I go to FB on occasion to see what my family and friends have posted but haven't really interacted much since engaging on G+.

fluidcruft 14y ago

> just on the fact that it gets you into the google ecosystem Don't forget that increased G+ use also should mean reduced eyeballs to the competition. If google gets its revenue from non-social, making social a monitization wasteland is a plus for them.

DigitalSea 14y ago

Lots of impressions and yet nobody but developers truly use it. MySpace isn't entirely dead are we forgetting that Justin Timberlake and Specific Media purchased the company not too long ago and have been working effortlessly in the background preparing to relaunch the website? If anyone should be worried it should be Google, Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest because many seem to forget MySpace possess a pretty large catalogue of indie and mainstream music, they have licence agreements with the big four record labels, have millions of videos... People love an underdog and I think MySpace is in a prime position when it relaunches. Comparing Tumblr or Pinterest to Google+ is like comparing a motorbike to a car, both forms of transport but each serves a different purpose. Google+ haven't won anything yet and I doubt they will, the landscape is going to be marginally different come 2013.

wamatt 14y ago
I thought Myspace already relaunched? Or are they going to do a re-relaunch?
- DigitalSea 14y ago
  They are relaunching again. You're thinking of the failed relaunch when Rupert Murdoch bought it. MySpace sat stagnant for about a year before Specific Media and Justin Timberlake bought it for $35 million. They're currently in the process of relaunching with focus being on media not as just another social network to compete with Facebook. I can't reveal any information about it, but lets just say I'm pretty in the know of MySpace happenings and plans for the relaunch and a lot of people are going to be very surprised of the new direction.
nl 14y ago
working effortlessly in the background Not sure what you are trying to say here, but I'm pretty sure someone working effortlessly in the background isn't adding a lot of value. If anyone should be worried it should be Google, Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest because many seem to forget MySpace Wow, there is a bold prediction. the landscape is going to be marginally different come 2013 A much less bold prediction, and somewhat at odds with what you wrote earlier.

tobylane 14y ago

Facebook ads aren't relevant? I'm no ad expert but I heard of someone proposing by a very strictly relevant Facebook advert.

sandGorgon 14y ago

One of the biggest wins of Google+ is its mobile app. Light years ahead of Facebook - which is slow and a power hog (without focusing on their recent bugs) For the HN crowd, several influential releases/announcements are now using Google+ exclusively: Linus Torvalds, lennart poettering, Cyanogenmod, Ingo Molnar. They still havent gotten the public/private interaction model right yet. For example, Linus went on an extended rant complaining about Google Events being used by uninvited spammers (which then got fixed when Vic Gundotra took it up)

kinleyd 14y ago
The G+ mobile app is really nice to use. It surprises me that the G+ desktop team is lagging so much behind the mobile team.

viraptor 14y ago

> MySpace is so small now! And shrinking! Let us never forget that history. And let's see if they can pivot the business around media. Myspace TV is a quite interesting idea and I'm waiting to see what's going to happen with it...