
Google+: 400 Million Registrations, 100 Million Monthly Active Users - rkudeshi
http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/09/17/as-predicted-google-passes-400m-registered-users-now-100m-monthly-active-users/
======
arturadib
There must be something seriously deceptive about these stats, particularly
the "active users" one.

To begin with, as experienced by others here, my Google+ is extremely quiet.
There may be at most a few people who occasionally post to it, and recently
I've seen many switch to Twitter.

Secondly, although not a perfect proxy, Google Trends shows an exponentially
decaying trend that is hardly in line with their reported exponential growth:

[http://www.google.com/trends/?q=google%2B,+google+plus&c...](http://www.google.com/trends/?q=google%2B,+google+plus&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Here's a zoomed-in graph in the last 12 months clearly showing the decaying
tail:

[http://www.google.com/trends/?q=google%2B,+google+plus&c...](http://www.google.com/trends/?q=google%2B,+google+plus&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0)

Let's compare for example with Twitter (~140-200M actives) in the last 12
months:

[http://www.google.com/trends/?q=google+plus,+google%2B,+twit...](http://www.google.com/trends/?q=google+plus,+google%2B,+twitter&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=1)

Regardless of how you rationalize people searching for "twitter" vs. "google
plus" as a proxy for active users, the decaying trend is clear. And it's hard
to think of why the query "google plus" or "google+" would be 50-70 times less
popular than "twitter" other than low the popularity of the service.

Of course none of this is hard proof, and it's possible that my circles are
just not representative of the internet as a whole and that Google Trends is a
fantastically erroneous proxy for popularity, but personally I believe they're
using an unrealistically optimistic metric for actives.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Be very careful of this one:

 _"To begin with, as experienced by others here, my Google+ is extremely
quiet."_

There is an interesting thing about G+ which hasn't "seeped in" to a lot of
users, is that 'share with my circles' doesn't share with people who are
following you but _you_ don't have in your circles. To hit those people you
need to share to 'public' (and yes there should be a share to followers which
is less broad than public but that is only my opinion)

Consequently you don't get as much 'fire hose' effect as you do on say
twitter. And the APIs that _post_ to Google+ are still not available as far as
I can tell (pls correct if this is mistaken!) and a lot of my Facebook feed is
not real news so much as auto-generated stuff from other apps. My point being
that 'seeing it as quiet' isn't a good measure of anything.

Then looking at searches is another poor proxy because once you've figured out
what G+ is, why search for it? And Google includes your G+ stuff in your
search results (much to the dismay of many).

I suspect the better proxy is going to find referrals from links in a G+ post.
How many links are sharing, how many links are being followed, how much
traffic does it drive. That will be a better measure of its success I expect.

~~~
arturadib
> _Then looking at searches is another poor proxy because once you've figured
> out what G+ is, why search for it?_

Same applies to Twitter, so the comparison is fair.

~~~
ok_craig
I think that what he means is, if you're on G+ and you go to Google, there's
already a link to your G+ profile at the top for you. You just click it,
instead of searching. And then if you want to find something specific maybe
you do the search in G+.

~~~
arturadib
If we're going to include external links we should also remember that Twitter
is built into iOS, so it's stats are also severely underrepresented.

Yet their Google Trends curves are going in opposite directions...

------
army
Is there detailed information about what counts as a Google+ MAU? It's not
totally clear what they are counting and how much of them are true MAUs of the
social network versus people who have Google accounts who somehow interacted
with something Google+ related while signed into Gmail (e.g. accidentally
clicked on a +1 next to a search result, or the notifications in the black
bar).

I'm a Google+ MAU, since I'm usually signed into my Google account, and
occasionally read blog posts on Google+. I'm a Google+ MAU in the same way as
I'm a MAU of plenty of other blog hosting sites. I don't use it as a social
network.

I think more detailed engagement numbers would tell the true story.

~~~
panacea
Is commenting on YouTube an active G+ action?

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ImprovedSilence
Yeah yeah, I'm an "active" G+ user, but all I've done in the past month is
have my photos from my phone automatically uploaded to it (not shared, just
for backup), and maybe shared a couple of things I saw on Google Reader, that
nobody will likely see, because, well, google broke readers social interface.

~~~
abraham
It sounds like you wouldn't be counted then since you didn't visit
plus.google.com or actively use the mobile app.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Perhaps, I didn't look at it that way. Do you think they track it by visits to
plus.google.com, or by activity? (ie, my phone uploads a photo ever time a
take a picture, or I "share" something via reader) You don't think those would
count as visits to plus.google.com, as my google account communicates with
plus? I get notifications in my gmail thingy every time a photo uploads as
well. Also, I do probably visit at least once a month and scroll through my
pics as well. I suppose it would be interesting to see what counts as a
"visit" or "active".

~~~
abraham
> And here too, I’m happy to report that we have just crossed 100,000,000
> monthly active users on Google+ (plus.google.com and mobile app)

Based on what Vic said I don't think you would be counted. They don't
explicitly say what does and does not count but it sounds like you would only
count when visit G+ and scroll through photos. I personally would count
sharing from Reader but but instant upload from the mobile app is passive
activity and should not be counted.

~~~
Evbn
What if I load plus in an iframe on Search, jusy to kill that obnoxious
dancing red notification counter?

~~~
abraham
It's not clear if that counts or not. Technically it is plus.google.com but
from a user perspective it is not.

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magnusgraviti
Even with this G+ looks like a social service for IT-related people. A lot of
programmers I know use G+.

But other people prefer to stay with those social services where the most of
their friends are. So happened it is not G+ but Facebook and other (e.g.
VKontakte).

Just noticed.

------
k3n
See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4533055>

------
filip01
Could it possibly be that they count users of Youtube/Google Drive and other
Google products as "active" Google Plus users? Something must indeed be
deceptive about these stats.

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GFischer
Those are nice numbers, but how is engagement?

I only visit Google+ because my admin didn't bother to block it, but nobody in
my social circle uses it, so I only have it to follow some funny pictures,
lifehacker and stuff (kind of a RSS feed).

Reminds me of Hotmail, which I check once a month or so, much like many people
I know which still has an account, but I'm sure Microsoft counts me as
"active", compared to Gmail which I check a zillion times a day.

~~~
OriginalSyn
The way to properly use G+ is as a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook. I have few
of my RL social circle (though it's growing) but I have tonnes of people I
used to follow on twitter on there and found more through circle sharing. I
have them categorized and throttled appropriately and I'm never lacking new
things to read, watch or discuss on G+.

The new killer feature for me is the events. This weekend it was my friend's
wedding and I made an event and invited my friends that were on G+, during the
event your phone can optionally go into "party mode" which shares photos and
video taken to the event page when the event ends your phone automatically
stops sharing. Between the 8 or so that "attended" the event we gathered over
200 photos and a few videos, it was great. Showing people that feature
convinced a few more to give G+ another, or first, shot.

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PostOnce
You're automatically signed up for Google+ when you create a Gmail account
now, or at least I was last week. I was annoyed. I had to manually turn it
off. You don't just slap my name on the public internet without asking me,
Google.

I thought they'd learned a lesson about this kind of behavior from Buzz.

~~~
Evbn
I am 98% certain they did learn from Buzz and did not create a public profile
for you without you clicking something to add Plus to your Gmail account.

Edit: just tried it. After creating a gmail accoun in mobile firefox, I had to
click through an interstitial ad page punting the Plus app, and then find the
hidden Cancel button on a G+ sign up form that was prefilled, and then I got
to my new mailbox.

So, it doesn't ever publish private data without consent, but the UX is
definitively evil in pretending to hold your mail hostage.

------
mattmaroon
That needs to end with ", 2 people you actually know using it sporadically to
post photos."

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mercuryrising
Do I count as 'active' if I only use the photo backup from my Android phone?

------
programminggeek
Google+ does have one killer feature: easy videoconferencing. It has very much
changed the way our remote team works with our client.

As a "status update" social network (in the FB, Twitter, MySpace), I'm not
sure that Google+ is going to change the world, but as a set of communication
tools, it might end up being what Wave always wanted to be.

~~~
GFischer
Thanks for the tip, I'll try that one out :)

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jwumanji
Im interested in knowing ehat googlr considers an `active use. the google plus
screen is integrated with their ecosystem but i dont know much who actively
use it.

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Steko
Anyone who buys into the "G+ is a ghost town propped up by Gmail and Android
numbers" theory will note that they literally just announced 500 million
Android activations a few days ago. And you'd expect a good number of users
are buying their second android phone.

~~~
GFischer
I don't understand your point.

I switched to Android, and so did everybody in my office, yet nobody feels
compelled to use Google Plus.

~~~
Steko
Probably 95% of non-fork Android users create or already have a Google account
at the time of activation. And probably 95% of the ones that don't end up
making one because it's a requirement for the app store or gmail or whatever.

Now there's nothing wrong with that. There's not even anything wrong with
defaulting G+ to "on".

What's "wrong" is to go around claiming G+ is some kind of amazing success
story that's growing like wildfire. It'd be like Apple adding a new Ping
checkbox to Apple id profiles that defaults to on and then claiming Ping has
400 million new users and is a runaway success.

~~~
k3n
G+ is not a requirement for Google Play, I have it disabled across my domain
and still access and use the store without issue.

~~~
Steko
"G+ is not a requirement for Google Play"

Not claimed.

The claim is that a Google Account is necessary for Google Play and when you
sign up for a Google Account the default for G+ is on. And again I don't see
anything wrong with that. But the obvious result is that this inflates the G+
numbers with people who aren't the least interested in G+ as a service. Again
if Apple did this with Ping they'd be a laughingstock.

~~~
k3n
Ah, you meant a Google account, gotcha.

------
pbharrin
Do robots count as "active users"?

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Evbn
Monthly is not "engagement", it is "barely aware of existence". What is daily
or weekly?

------
aliks
Question is What is G+:

a) social network b) New target for adsense c) annoying sh-it that is
everywhere.

