

50 Percent Will Abandon Facebook for Google+, Poll Finds - nextparadigms
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2389102,00.asp

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varunsrin
This poll is inaccurate for many reasons:

\- Poll audience is skewed (PCMag readership, people who showed up on the site
that day)

\- Just because people want to move to G+, doesn't mean they will, unless the
rest of their social group does (again, back to point#1)

Not saying that Google + wont do well, or anything just that this poll is
pretty much useless as reliable source to base any predictions on.

I would look at things like user engagement, activity etc - this is extremely
anecdotal, but so far a lot of my circles (except for my close friends one)
have been spammy with poor content filtering (facebook is good about surfacing
posts from people i care about, but then again they have a lot more data about
who i 'care' about)

My close friends circle has been pretty inactive and I check it maybe once a
week, but that might be because there's only 30 people there. Most of my G+
activity over the last week has consisted largely of adding people into
circles, and not much else, sadly.

I would also add that my social circles probably have a larger proportion of
early adopters than the average user, since I studied programming & work in
the software industry (and my social circles tend to reflect that).

I must admit I am also really nervous about merging my social & online
identities into one account owned by one company, though the average person
would not care about this.

~~~
Luyt
You are right: Grannie is already on facebook and isn't gonna learn another
social network interface.

~~~
EliAndrewC
The grannie in my family will sign up for whichever social network has the
pictures of her grandson. So I think that even (especially?) non-technical
users will choose whether to sign up based primarily on who else they know is
using it.

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Steko
In a related poll, 100% of flies trapped in spiderwebs want to break free.

I hope to god Google+ kills Facebook but I'd bet every single cent I have that
400 million Facebook users will not be leaving for G+ anytime soon.

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g123g
Its a scary thought to have one company control almost all the data for a
user. Just think what kind of data Google is collecting using their search
engine, adsense, gmail, chrome etc. And now if they have users also move their
social circles to Google+, it will give them almost complete information about
a person. This is for them THE missing piece of the puzzle to tie everything
together. Just for this single reason, I am never going to join Google+
however fancy and cool those circles look like.

~~~
nkassis
I'be been wondering about this. Is better for one company to have all your
info or multiple companies having all your info? At least by concentrating you
can minimize the leaks no?

~~~
greyman
Which other company has all your info? Facebook doesn't have your searches,
nor your emails.

~~~
nkassis
They pretty much do albeit indirectly, they do have my (incomplete) web
history from a bunch of site with like buttons and other such means. I'm not
arguing Google has more then most but they all have enough to build a fairly
complete profile of me.

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wisty
50% said "yes" to Google+. 7% said Facebook is irreplaceable. The rest are
undecided, unable to join Google+, or responded with "screw social networks".

On the other hand, it's a poll on PCMag. It's not a serious poll, so it's
inherently worthless; and the readership is probably biased.

I feel I'd switch my use to Google+ if about 30% of my friends were there, if
I liked the interface and privacy stuff more (I haven't seen it yet).

Plus, there's more than a snowball's hope in hell that Google+ will turn out
to be a better development platform.

~~~
ipince
I agree that it's heavily biased. For instance, 12% said they haven't even
tried G+ yet. Clearly that percentage is higher in the "real world".

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SODaniel
And how many of those 50% have actually tried Google+?

At date I believe Google+ has around 30 million users and Facebook has 800
million+

How is this study possibly even close to relevant? I joined Google+ about 2
weeks ago and haven't even gotten used to their interface!

I am so damn tired of nonsense surveys without any form of significant or
scientific basis.

Also; I believe that 70% of all Google+ users and Facebook users are likely to
join iFriends.com (surveyed from Apple users)

~~~
fragsworth
> Also; I believe that 70% of all Google+ users and Facebook users are likely
> to join iFriends.com (surveyed from Apple users)

For a moment I thought "What? When did I miss Apple coming out with their own
social network?" and so I checked iFriends.com; all I have to say is I wasn't
really surprised at what I saw.

~~~
SODaniel
Well that will surely teach me to check the ramdom URL's I type. Was merely
making a lighthearted comment on the irony of choosing a user type and asking
them aimed questions.

Disclaimer; Not an ifriends.com user and never will be. Seems like a cheap
adultfriendfinder affiliate. And a crappy one at that.

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bradleyland
It's incredibly difficult to poll populations of 750 million people and get an
accurate cross-section. Especially when that population is spread out across
multiple continents. To give a sense of scope, the number of people polled
represents only 0.0008316% of Facebook users. With a sample that small, you'd
have to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure diversity in polling cross-
section.

In other words, this poll is useless.

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rjd
... TBH if only 50% of users in the current primary demographic (PC Mag) are
interested... that might not be a good result for Google+ at all...

~~~
nextparadigms
There's also some users from Twitter, and also other users that have never
liked Facebook and aren't using it. So Facebook may end up keeping 700 mil
users, while Google+ could have 600 mil, or more.

~~~
rjd
I'm not as optomistic as yourself. Outside of my IT friends Google+ is
currently a joke. Even inside my group theres a strong division, theres a
strong feeling that Google is going to far, alot of people are already upset
with Googles privacy issues adn this is a whole new level of issues.

The next thing is 20mil may seem like a great figure, but thats only ~7% of
gmail users. That figure is actually pretty average in terms of its user base
and a hot new product a month in. I would be slightly concerned if I was the
product manager... especially with reports of decline already...

And don't pretend the invite thing why its low, I don't know a person who
hasn't got an invite including both my elderly parents.

I don't think Google will fail because of the army of fan boys and wannabes,
but I don't think in its current iteration it offers anything that can grow a
community.

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dredmorbius
Holy sampling bias, Batman!

This sort of non-story is the kind of thing that makes me want to revoke a
"journalist"'s posting privileges.

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Arxiss
50% ? Awesome. But in my city, 99% of people doesn't even know what is g+.
That 1% are geeks and my family members I told about g+.

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27182818284
That only sets Facebook back like, what, a year?

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DrStalker
If the poll is somehow perfectly accurate then 50% of ~800 Million is still a
pretty decent userbase.

But if Google give Facebook a chance to fearmonger about how Google+ users
risk losing all Google services (including gmail history) without warning
while simultaneously not allowing anyone with a Google Apps account to access
the service without really cumbersome workarounds then Google+ will be
remembered just like Google Wave is.

~~~
kule
Don't forget that's 50% of around 6000 techies. In reality I would've thought
at least 90% of those 800 million users are non-techies. Maybe they are doing
lots of advertising in the states, however here in the UK I'm pretty sure I
could ask most non-techies and they wouldn't have even heard of Google+.

It's the one thing that's going to make it tough to beat facebook now is that
it's become a household name - most people have heard of it even if they
haven't been on the site.

~~~
pestaa
And that's mainly because of their so-called development platform picked up by
marketing researchers. I am still astonished to see grown-up companies with
functional websites driving traffic to "their" out-of-control Facebook pages
even with full page ads.

If Google+ would appeal for marketing purposes, I bet it'll gain at least as
much popularity in a blink of an eye.

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SODaniel
I guess in their defense, they never said it was a scientific poll.

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aveffects
Poll taken from Google+ fans

