
Graph: How long it took Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to reach 10 million users - aditiyaa1
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/07/22/graph-how-long-it-took-facebook-twitter-and-google-to-reach-10-million-users/
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programminggeek
Stupid graph, that's comparing apples and oranges. Yes products are identical,
but the distribution is totally different.

Facebook intentionally was only on college campuses. It let them scale slowly
and work their way up the chain so to speak.

Twitter was crushed by growth and didn't have an existing user base to tap
into.

Google+ growth is impressive, but it's built on top of how many Google
Accounts, GMail accounts, Chat accounts and so on? It was designed from day 1
to get to the same 700+ million users that Facebook had.

I doubt either twitter or facebook ever considered the idea of getting a
billion people to use them when they launched.

Also, even more than Buzz or Wave, Google+'s only value lies in inviting your
friends. So, people invite their friends. It's like a social game, it only is
fun if other people play it. It is in everybody's best interest to invite
their friends, otherwise you are just sharing with Google's servers. If I
wanted to work on a wave, it was with 1-5 people, if I want my social network
on Google+, I'm going to invite 100+ people.

Apples. Oranges.

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angdis
OK, yes, apples and oranges, but it is not a "stupid" graph.

The graph provocatively illustrates that google+ could steamroll over facebook
in a very short time, if they play their game right.

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awj
It in no way illustrates that, for the reasons programminggeek provided.

Google+ is making a huge splash, that is about the only meaningful statement
that this graph illustrates. It doesn't suggest that they could dethrone
facebook because there's a hell of a lot more to making a good social network
than how quickly it gets ten million users.

For me and my friends, google+ is a dead zone. I signed up to check it out,
and barely have looked at it since. I would like to use it some day, when more
of the people I really want to connect with are on it, but there's really no
certainty that it will make it to that point.

Until then, be very wary of false extrapolations.

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leftnode
It's a bit easier when you already have a user base of billions.

Edit: So I disagree with the article entirely, it's not interesting at all.

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tibbon
Agreed, that having a huge user base of another product helps.

But did Google Wave or Buzz take off that fast? I don't think Wave ever
probably got to that many users.

~~~
aditiyaa1
Thats true,part of it maybe that we were a bit tired of FB . Also there was a
sense of hype around the launch of Google + which we didnt have in Wave or
Buzz.

Even though I use FB more than any other social networking websites, I still
think many of their features suck a lot (photo album, chat). It bothers me
that they have been in business for so long , but they have failed to
incorporate better features . For me the way FB was frantically responding to
Google+ seems silly. They should have done these way before. Can anyone
explain why FB had to wait for adding new features until Google+ was launched.

~~~
Ronkdar
Google Wave and Buzz were published with minimal fanfare, and used a paradigm
unfamiliar to Facebook users. Google+ is so familiar, and became so quickly
wrapped up with everything else in your Google account, that transitioning and
participating were easy.

~~~
FaceKicker
In Google+'s case, would you say that a single blog post on the day it
launched was anything beyond "minimal fanfare"?

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phreeza
Also interesting to compare these timespans to other networks, like telephone
and fax. Not sure how accurate these figures are, but for a ballpark:
<http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v201/kaap/fig3.gif>

~~~
wallflower
Since no one has yet brought up Metcalfe's Law:

"Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is
proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system
(n^2)"

"The law has often been illustrated using the example of fax machines: a
single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases
with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number
of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases. Goods
characterize the first component or intrinsic network effect. Services fall
under the second component of network effects known as complementary.[6] A
social networking site works the same way as the fax machine described above.
The greater number of users with the service, the more valuable the service
becomes to the community. Deriving from Metcalfe's Law, every new "friend"
accepted or added on these social networking sites makes the user's profile
ever more valuable in terms of the law. Positive and negative outcomes take
place with all network effects involving a service of this sort. New jobs,
relationships, and opportunities arise with more people coming together,
however, if not used correctly, services of this type can lead to distant
relationships."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfes_law>

(If you read the Wikipedia entry, also read about "Reverse Effects")

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thurn
Yeah, and new Facebook features probably get 10 million users overnight. So
what?

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badclient
Two weeks is how long it took for me to get as many spammy adds on Circles as
I have gotten on Facebook in 6 years.

These stats are a complete joke. Almost any major google launch gets this type
of initial surge. That google is happy to celebrate and even cite this type of
stats tells me they are looking at the wrong metrics.

How about: how many people have given up fb for google plus?

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zipdog
I think the real test will be September: how many students have moved across
to running their Social Networking through Plus, as opposed to Facebook or
something else.

Once terms begins I suspect people will form around one network or another as
their primary tool, so if Plus hasn't managed to get full social groups across
and active by then, they may well default to Facebook as their primary social
network for organising and sharing. Alternatively, I could see Hangouts
managing to grow as a chat/skype substitute even if social groups were
generally staying on Facebook as their Events and Sharing site.

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rationalbeaver
Replace Facebook with Google Search and Twitter with Gmail, then add in Orkut
for good measure. That would be an interesting graph.

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mbesto
> _It doesn’t really require much more explaining than this_

Ugh...actually it does:
<http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/25593>

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kqueue
I think this article was written to drive traffic only. The author is
comparing apples and oranges and he knows it.

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ja27
Most of the people I know on Google+ got their invite after asking on Facebook
or Twitter.

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nhebb
Alternate title: "How long it took Google+ to reach 1.3% of the number of
Facebook users"

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unreal37
I'd like to see the graph of how long it took Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to
reach 100 million users. Oh wait, Twitter and Google+ aren't even close to
that.

Google+ is still a novelty. That doesn't mean it won't eventually become
something useful, but right now I have 20 people in my circles, and not one
person posts anything. It's more accurate to say there are 10 million accounts
on Google+, not users. Users implies people actually use it.

~~~
bengarvey
Wikipedia says that Twitter has about 200 million users. The last figure I
heard a while back was about 150. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter>

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mishmash
Instead of hockey stick growth, would this be like light pole growth? ;)

