6 ms·

The only social network from Google that had a chance... before they killed it off.

mkozlows 11y ago
Google Reader never had many users. Feedly claims to have captured 80% of the Reader userbase when it shut down, and they have 15 million users. That is incredibly small by the standards of social networks, much smaller than even the pessimistic active-user estimates for G+.
- lvs 11y ago
  Feedly probably isn't claiming those numbers with any basis in reality. In particular, many people made Feedly accounts in a hurry out of panic when the shutdown was announced. Having used both, I highly doubt users of Reader are still regular users of Feedly.
  - deegles 11y ago
    I'm a former Reader user and now use Feedly. What do you use that's better than Feedly? I settled on it since it was "good enough" but I haven't invested the time to explore other options.
    - sp332 11y ago
      NewsBlur is probably the best of the Reader replacements. http://newsblur.com/ http://newsblur.com/ https://twitter.com/newsblur https://twitter.com/newsblur
      - qznc 11y ago
        Not for me. There are so many different ways people use feed readers. Google reader was amazing in how many different workflows it supported.
        alxndr 11y ago
        Since I never used the social aspects of Google Reader, Feedly wasn't my cup of tea; I have turned to Inoreader.
    - lewisl9029 11y ago
      I host my own TT-RSS instance: https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss/wikis/home https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss/wikis/home Not as fancy as some of the commercial offerings, but I never need to worry about it getting killed off.
    - Johnny_Brahms 11y ago
      theoldreader I couldn't stand feedlys interface, and theoldreader is good enough.
  - nodivbyzero 11y ago
    I switched to http://digg.com/reader http://digg.com/reader
- giovannibajo1 11y ago
  I always wonder what would be the active-user count for G++ without YouTube (i.e. every logged in Google user visiting a YouTube page is marked as an active G+ user if she scrolls down the page once).
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    YouTube is about 40% of public G+ activity as I've measured it. Also Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting. https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on-google-plus/ https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on...
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  The number of active G+ accounts -- publicly posting in any given month -- is less than that. I and Eric Enge, he of Stone Temple Consulting, have independently estimated this based on G+ sitemap sampling. I pulled about 50k profiles off a single sitemap, Enge 500k from multiple. My pull was based on strong evidence that the profiles are randomly distributed through sitemaps. Both of us found ~6-12m publicly active profiles. Among my thoughts: the group of people really discussing things online just isn't that big. Reader was far more significant than Google realised. https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on-google-plus/ https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on...
  - mkozlows 11y ago
    That is a bad definition of "active," particularly considering that the original selling point of G+ relative to Facebook was its privacy controls (circles). I know many people who post to G+, only a few of whom do so publicly.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      That is a bad definition of "active" Both Enge and I address both the definition of "active" and of "invisible" non-public activity. 1. We're limited to directly observable public actvity. Given the sitemaps providing a population of profiles to sample, that means looking at actual public posts. Anything else would be Making Shit Up, which I prefer not to do. 2. It's possible get some sense of non-public activity by looking at followers and views for profiles with and without public activity. Evidence is that profiles without public posts have about 4.3% of the activity of those with. That gives roughly 4% of the total G+ userbase, or about 95 million users. Again: showing activity at any time. That about doubles the active users count in total. (112 million + 95 million). It doesn't speak to recent activity, though. My initial G+ "public activity" analysis: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/nAya9WqdemIoVuVWVOYQUQ https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/nAya9WqdemIoVuVWVOYQUQ Follow-up "active" public sharing accounts vs. "inactive" non-public-sharing accounts https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/RhnKkfTNPKR https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/RhnK...

Google Reader never had many users. Feedly claims to have captured 80% of the Reader userbase when it shut down, and they have 15 million users. That is incredibly small by the standards of social networks, much smaller than even the pessimistic active-user estimates for G+.

lvs 11y ago
Feedly probably isn't claiming those numbers with any basis in reality. In particular, many people made Feedly accounts in a hurry out of panic when the shutdown was announced. Having used both, I highly doubt users of Reader are still regular users of Feedly.
- deegles 11y ago
  I'm a former Reader user and now use Feedly. What do you use that's better than Feedly? I settled on it since it was "good enough" but I haven't invested the time to explore other options.
  - sp332 11y ago
    NewsBlur is probably the best of the Reader replacements. http://newsblur.com/ http://newsblur.com/ https://twitter.com/newsblur https://twitter.com/newsblur
    - qznc 11y ago
      Not for me. There are so many different ways people use feed readers. Google reader was amazing in how many different workflows it supported.
      - alxndr 11y ago
        Since I never used the social aspects of Google Reader, Feedly wasn't my cup of tea; I have turned to Inoreader.
  - lewisl9029 11y ago
    I host my own TT-RSS instance: https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss/wikis/home https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss/wikis/home Not as fancy as some of the commercial offerings, but I never need to worry about it getting killed off.
  - Johnny_Brahms 11y ago
    theoldreader I couldn't stand feedlys interface, and theoldreader is good enough.
- nodivbyzero 11y ago
  I switched to http://digg.com/reader http://digg.com/reader
giovannibajo1 11y ago
I always wonder what would be the active-user count for G++ without YouTube (i.e. every logged in Google user visiting a YouTube page is marked as an active G+ user if she scrolls down the page once).
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  YouTube is about 40% of public G+ activity as I've measured it. Also Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting. https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on-google-plus/ https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on...
dredmorbius 11y ago
The number of active G+ accounts -- publicly posting in any given month -- is less than that. I and Eric Enge, he of Stone Temple Consulting, have independently estimated this based on G+ sitemap sampling. I pulled about 50k profiles off a single sitemap, Enge 500k from multiple. My pull was based on strong evidence that the profiles are randomly distributed through sitemaps. Both of us found ~6-12m publicly active profiles. Among my thoughts: the group of people really discussing things online just isn't that big. Reader was far more significant than Google realised. https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on-google-plus/ https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on...
- mkozlows 11y ago
  That is a bad definition of "active," particularly considering that the original selling point of G+ relative to Facebook was its privacy controls (circles). I know many people who post to G+, only a few of whom do so publicly.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    That is a bad definition of "active" Both Enge and I address both the definition of "active" and of "invisible" non-public activity. 1. We're limited to directly observable public actvity. Given the sitemaps providing a population of profiles to sample, that means looking at actual public posts. Anything else would be Making Shit Up, which I prefer not to do. 2. It's possible get some sense of non-public activity by looking at followers and views for profiles with and without public activity. Evidence is that profiles without public posts have about 4.3% of the activity of those with. That gives roughly 4% of the total G+ userbase, or about 95 million users. Again: showing activity at any time. That about doubles the active users count in total. (112 million + 95 million). It doesn't speak to recent activity, though. My initial G+ "public activity" analysis: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/nAya9WqdemIoVuVWVOYQUQ https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/nAya9WqdemIoVuVWVOYQUQ Follow-up "active" public sharing accounts vs. "inactive" non-public-sharing accounts https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/RhnKkfTNPKR https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/RhnK...