

Google+ is Growing Like Crazy - calufa
https://plus.google.com/117388252776312694644/posts/1k85ZNPCu1A

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adorton
Just so people are clear - this isn't THE Paul Allen. This Paul Allen is a
Utah-based entrepreneur.

I'm sure that's obvious to most here, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

~~~
shantanubala
To be honest, I was first a little excited when I saw the headline, but I
realized it was a different person when I saw the profile picture. The title
of the post is a bit confusing since I didn't know of the Utah-based Paul
Allen.

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tokenadult
My surname is so rare that by United States government policy it does not show
up on federal lists of surnames by frequency.

<http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/dist.all.last>

I am on Google+.

A New York Times article

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17surnames.html>

establishes some context on the frequency of various surnames in the United
States. English surnames are predominant, but Spanish surnames are gaining
relative frequency.

P.S. Responding to another comment here, surely as more companies get into
social networking, and social networking becomes a growing share of all
Internet activity, third-party organizations will have to agree on
standardized methodologies for estimating users of each service, to guide
advertisers and investors, and to answer the questions of journalists. For the
moment, I notice that Google+ has already achieved a status previously
achieved for me by HN and by Facebook--I tend to keep a tab open to it at all
times while I am browsing the Web.

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gaius
Another problem with G+: it's not happy that people have non-GMail email
addresses. Let's say I have my friend John Smith jsmith@gmail.com in a circle.
G+ keeps asking me if I want to add him still. Why? Because in my GMail, I
have also emailed him at john_smith@hotmail.com. There's no way for me to tell
it that these are the same person.

So I think G+ may be double-counting a significant number of users.

~~~
X-Istence
I have a lot of people with multiple email addresses, and as long as they are
merged into a single contact Google+ no longer asks me to add them to a
circle...

~~~
abp
Downvote accident on my mobile. Sorry, someone get him that point back,
please. Thanks in advance.

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SonicSoul
Buzz had a similar opening <http://goo.gl/kA0pH> Such measures are meaningless
because no effort is required to join for existing G users. Lets wait for
Facebook or Twitter conversion rates to come out before breaking out the
Crystal

~~~
city41
You still need an invite and then walk through the sign up process, even if
you already have a Google account. Buzz was just dropped on all Gmail users
out of nowhere.

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Estragon
The methodology offered in the comments, of googling for
[http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&biw=1366&bih=653&#...</a> and taking the
number of results returned for the number of users, seems more direct.
Currently that returns about 6.5 million users, which is in the same ballpark.

~~~
EricBurnett
I see about 2.8 million results from that query, but I'm not surprised the
number changes a lot. The result counts are a very rough approximation
calculated on the fly, and shouldn't be relied on for more than order-of-
magnitude estimates.

The last name method is precise, but of questionable accuracy; the result
count is probably more accurate, but very imprecise. Take your pick :).

~~~
Estragon
That's interesting; if I anonymize by searching through Google Sharing, I also
get 2.8 million results. Searching from my own IP address (though without
being logged in) still gives 6.5 million.

~~~
esrauch
I think that they are reorganizing the results based on if you are signed in
with an account that has plus or not. There was someone who posted that their
Google+ was "already" in the top 10 results and twitter wasn't even shown, but
it was only true if you were logged in.

Hopefully they aren't doing something too drastic; there's allegedly already
an ongoing antitrust investigation about how google orders its search results.

~~~
Estragon
Maybe, but it's worth noting that I wasn't signed in, and don't have a G+
account, yet.

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topbanana
Great, but I can't use it because those who pay money for Google Apps for
Domains are exluded from having a profile. No, I don't know why either.

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jcfrei
I think calling G+ to be growing like crazy is misleading. Gmail itself has
about 200 mio. users - migrating those users to a G+ account shouldnt be that
difficult. What's really gonna be interesting is whether G+ will be capable of
attracting new users, which are not yet part of google's 'services cloud'.

~~~
lhnz
True, but I also think it will be interesting to see whether the users that
get a Google+ account actually use it. I use Twitter for purpose-less
tech/business opinions. I use Facebook rarely to talk to my brother and
sister. I use Skype for work conversations. I don't yet see people using this
enough for me to want to move to it.

edit; If they created some kind of BBM-type android service that sat on top of
Google+ I think it would make me switch my SMS usage because I have a lot of
friends that use Android phones...

~~~
jbrkr
_BBM-type android service_

You've described Huddle[1], part of the Google+ app for Android.

 _"Huddle lets you send super-fast messages to the people you care about
most."_

Presumably, Huddle will be part of the Google+ app on other platforms, too.

[1]
[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.app...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.plus)

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yalogin
Whether Google+ is really growing like crazy or not, it appears that there is
definitely a place for a new social network outside of facebook. And on that
note could not help think that Apple probably missed a great opportunity with
Ping.

~~~
codabrink
And I'm glad they did. Judging from Apple's business model, it would have been
yet another closed off, keep your data social network. I've been dying for an
open network like Google+, and I think things played out quite well.

~~~
kmavm
What's open about Google+? You can delete your account and download your data
from Facebook as well; you can also write third party applications that read
and write from/to Facebook, unlike Google+.

~~~
codabrink
Google allows you to export your data through their "Google Takeout" service.
This includes your contacts and circles, unlike facebook, who is now pushing
harder than ever to keep your contacts in Facebook.

~~~
kmavm
facebook.com -> Account settings -> Security -> 'Click here to download a copy
of the data you've put on Facebook.'

~~~
cryptoz
Right. Export everything but internet contact info...the most useful parts
they keep locked up. That button does not export email addresses. Fake export.

~~~
kmavm
I'll let Google explain the _exact same product decision_ for their social
network Orkut in 2009:

"Mass exportation of email is not standard on most social networks — when a
user friends someone they don’t then expect that person to be easily able to
send that contact information to a third party along with hundreds of other
addresses with just one click. In order to protect user privacy, we now
exclude email addresses from the CSV export file."

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/orkut-slows-hemorraging-
to-...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/26/orkut-slows-hemorraging-to-facebook-
by-making-friend-export-tool-nearly-useless/)

They're right. Programmatic export of friends' email addresses is too ripe for
abuse in the world we live in.

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calufa
// in 1 hour I found 1 million users, so I guess is more than 4.5 millions

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davros
where are all these people getting their invites? Dropping hints with my
Google contacts hasn't worked...

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rwolf
Invites have been open all day. I'll invite you if you don't mind being
disconnected entirely from the social graph. Please add a way to contact you,
or a link to a way to contact you, to your HN profile.

~~~
davros
Thanks mate : ) Gmail added to my HN profile

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bonch
Google Buzz also had "tens of millions" of people:
<http://tinyurl.com/64fhwdq>

~~~
tonfa
It was kind of forced to gmail users though.

