I saw this old thread about Google+
What do you all think? Is it still too soon to tell?
I don’t use either G+ or Facebook
Yes.
It has become a standing joke that G+ is only used by Google employees.
I think conceptually it could have been good, but even though I’m an avid Google products and Gmail user, it’s almost too opaque to use. Unlike Facebook, there’s no “there” there. Essentially it’s just a way to email links to things.
It’s also impacting on other services - Picasaweb now defaults to Google+ and you have to go round the houses trying to claw back the functionality offered by the Picasaweb site.
FAIL+
I think of Google+ more like MySpace 2. It’s a sequel of a bygone product.
What about wave and buzz? 
The whole “invite only” part of Google+ was bullshit. Especially compared to the very easy signup method that Facebook employes
I vote too soon to tell.
In my opinion the privacy model, sharing tools, social tools and collaborative tools that G+ has is superior to facebook.
It’s just too bad no one I care about uses it. Therefore I don’t use it. It’s tough to beat the freight train of momentum that facebook already has.
I do occasionally use hangouts to run screen-sharing meetings though.
The “invite only” thing was only for the beta phase.
Yes, and for gmail iirc the beta phase lasted a good year. Were they afraid that their servers would not be able to handle the added traffic, or were they trying to create hysterical demand (Apple)?
I don’t think they have integrated youtube in that well with Google+ (still no comment threading)
I think that’s the main thing. Facebook is better because everyones already on Facebook. Google+ might be a better service, but marginal improvements aren’t really enough to draw people away from the massive advantage of a service that everyone you meet already has an account on.
I think this was an attempt to solve the problem I mentioned above. If someone sends you an invite to Google+, then you know you know at least one person already using the service.
Note that Facebook did something similar when it first started, requiring new members to be part of a limited number of colleges or businesses.
Hmmm … I’m the only one who said no so far.
It’s all in who’s in your circles. I check G+ all the time, much more frequently than I check Facebook. There’s more interesting stuff there and the interface is better.
The only people I know who use it regularly are my friend who works for Google and our mutual friend who for some reason is way too cool for Facebook (and would like to live up the butt of the Google-working friend). Their wives do too, sometimes, but their posts get more traction on Facebook.
Seems to me that all they do is post links to articles they find interesting and an occasional photo of their kid. Then there’s “What’s Hot” posts from other random people I don’t know, which also consist of links they found interesting. Sooooo…It’s Reddit. Yay.
It’s way too soon to tell. You actually have to give something like a social network a few years to grow before you can tell if it is being used.
And the invite only method was a lot less of a pain in the ass than the “only if you have a university email address from an approved university” thing that Facebook did for the fist three years of existence (or something). Things grow and evolve, nothing is perfect when it first starts. Facebook had the advantage of not going through its growing pains in the spotlight like google is having to deal with.
It has been growing, not shrinking, consistently since launch. It now has over 100m users.
I believe that 100m users number means 100m users who have logged on within the past 30 days (so we can’t say it is 100m inactive accounts.)
However, it’s still nowhere near Facebook. The difference is not just the registration gap (Facebook has 8x as many) but the usage gap. It seems like most people who have a google+ account spend a tiny bit of time each month actually using it.
Facebook users average many hours a day of use. Again, I don’t really know how all of this can be actively measured because I’ve always wondered about the “open tab” that someone might have all day but that doesn’t really mean that person is “using” a site.
But I’d say that right now, google+ is still growing, but its members don’t use it much. That second trend is what is most important and will need to change if it is to be a success.
So they have cornered the introvert market? Perhaps they will have some games for people to kill time with. (they most likely do)
I voted yes, but I wish it wasn’t. I’d rather use G+, but there’s no point running between both G+ and FB all the time. And now all my friends have abandoned it. It sucks, because the privacy is so much better, the interface is nicer etc. It’s just all-round much better than FB. I actually really don’t like FB at all, but I want to see what my friends all over the world are doing…
Last I heard it was still growing in the US, but had been given up on in Europe.
I think it’s too soon to tell.
A point of confusion I have always had with it is that it was never clear to me what the purpose/goal of Google Plus is. I saw a lot of “it’s not Facebook” but what IS it?
It makes me wonder if there is some niche out there that Google Plus is perfectly suited for, but it hasn’t yet risen to the point where everyone needs it (like who would have guessed we needed FB?). I think it could all turn around once a need emerges.
I think there’s a difference in the invite only issue compared to FB. FB originally billed itself as a networking service for college students, so it made sense that it was only available to college students back in the day. Google Plus is supposed to be for everyone, but the long invite-only beta dragged it down.
As a point of reference, A LOT of my friends were excited about a less-annoying alternative to FB, so there was great initial interest in G+. As a cohort, I think we gave it the ol’ college try BUT that was still not enough to get us to stick with it – it feels like there isn’t any “there” there.
Too soon to tell. I’m using it because a lot of my friends jumped ship early on and use G+ instead of Facebook, so there’s always a lot of stuff there for me to read. Also, I’ve followed a lot of photographers and bloggers (including our own Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait), so I get those updates also. That said, overall use of G+ is still really low compared to Facebook and I think it’s sort of teetering on the balance of fading into obscurity on the one hand, or reaching a tipping point and taking off on the other. I read fast and write fast, so I have plenty of personal bandwidth to be able to keep up with two social networks. Not everyone does, and I think that’s pretty much G+'s problem, particularly since Facebook has updated with some nicer privacy features. (I still think privacy on Facebook is a bit of an oxymoron; but I am glad that they’ve implemented easier-to-use lists so that you can target your audience more precisely.)
I may be wrong, but a) they push people to signing up to view content (e.g. Picasa) and b) once you’re a G+ member you are automatically logged in when you’re on Gmail even if you’re not using the service. IOW I think that figure’s somewhat inflated.
I signed up early for Google+ even though I figured I was not part of the target audience; I’m 58 years old, definitely not one of the cool kids. I am a nearly daily reader of Facebook. I reply to things fairly often on Facebook, but don’t post much there other than replies.
The reason I have rarely returned to Google+ since signing up is that few people I know are there, and I never hear any tell me that they posted something on Google+ that might interest me. I hear that about Facebook daily.
As an introverted Facebook game-player, I’d jump ship in a minute if I knew there were some interesting games.