Billions Have Signed Up For Google+. Literally No One Uses It

[The_Showstopper]

Billions Have Signed Up For Google+. Literally No One Uses It

Nobody is using Google+. At least, far fewer than you might imagine. Analytics and visualisation blogger Kevin Anderson charts information about Google's social networking platform and finds that despite billions of sign-ups, hardly anyone actually does anything on it.



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Anderson studies data compiled by Edward Morbius, who says that just 9% of its 2.2 billion users actively post public content. On Ello, Morbius writes that based on his research between 4-6 million people engage, interact, and post publicly on Google+. Anderson's analysis covers January 2015.

Morbius cites a Re/Code interview from last year with Google+ boss Dave Besbris. In it, Besbris says "I don't want to talk about numbers," and Morbius questions whether he's "hiding something." It appears he is.

Here's a summary of his findings:

There are about 2.2 billion G+ profiles. Of these, about 9% have any publicly-posted content. Of those, about 37% have as their most recent activity are comments on YouTube videos, another 8% are profile photo changes. Only 6% of active profiles have any post activity in 2015 (18 days so far). Only about half of those, 3% of active profiles, are not YouTube posts. That is, 0.2% - 0.3% of all G+ profiles, about 4-6 million users, have made public post in 2015.

Morbius explains his research:

This is an analysis which estimates active G+ users, defined as those who've made a post to G+, not simply commented on a YouTube video, in the month of January, 2015. It's based on pulling Google's on Profile sitemaps and sampling profile pages based on them. You should be able to replicate the process yourself (or with a hackishly-minded assistant) using the methods described.

Both parties concede that the numbers only take public content; private posts or comments remain uncovered. "But it's a pretty clear indication of publically visible activity," Morbius stresses.

Morbius also notes the importance of YouTube in all of this. Of the profiles where people use Google+, 37% are through a YouTube video. Another 8% is a profile photo change. Indeed, as Morbius looks through profiles and activity, he concludes that the low percentages "tell us why Google was so eager to combine YouTube and G+ comments - it's doubled the G+ activity".

From his 2015 analysis particularly, Morbius covers hundreds of Google+ profiles in detail. One poignant statistic is this: "We've got a grand spanking total of 24 profiles out of 7,875 who's 2015 post activity isn't YouTube comments but Google+ posts. That a 0.3% rate of all profile pages, going back to our 2.2 billion profiles." Clearly, with YouTube Google+ would seem even less popular."No wonder Dave Besbris doesn't want to talk about numbers," he writes.

Morbius finishes with some caveats:

I'm a space alien cat living outside the solar system. I don't have any conflicts of interest, other than a considerably growing distrust of Google. I use G+ actively myself, and find it useful, though limiting and exceptionally frustrating. And I dislike FaceBook far more.

The conclusions here are based on sampling and I've seen them shift by a few million as more data rolls in. Still, I'm pretty confident that the total number of publicly posting (not commenting, which could well be far higher) users is well below 10 million for January, 2015.

Originally published on Business Insider India


Billions Have Signed Up For Google+ How Come No One Uses It?

 

[Basel]

I have a profile on google+ but find it difficult to understand and use also its true that very few people use it.

 

[Jaanbaz]

I was forced to sign it by Google.

 

[Basel]

I was forced to sign it by Google.

I also never signed up for profile one day don't know how I got it while working on my gmail options.

 

[Shardul.....the lion]

I too member but never used it

 

[Jazzbot]

Most of the google+ profiles are created automatically or by one click. A lot of people use Gmail, and hence they have G+ account. But very few people actually use it.

I created mine years ago, but never checked it.

 

[EL LOBO]

google plus... that is for tharkis... have tharki friends that uses it...

 

[slapshot]

Instead of introducing a new platform Google should have incorporated the features to YOUTUBE. People already use it a lot for fun so it could grab more attention from users. Google seems to be having no luck with social networks applications just look at what happened to Orkut, Buzz and Google +.

 

[nasirahmad]

i use it regularly

 

[karakoram]

I never used it. But google had some golden time with ORKUT it was awesome.

 

[JohnyD]

Orkut was much better and had more loyal fan followers..G+ was literally imposed on Orkut members ..I too ve G+ account but dont remember when last time I had connected to it..its a flop, in fact super flop product from Google....I still wish, google had invested more in Orkut, a real pioneer of social networking!

 

[TankMan]

 

[zaid butt]

i think I'm alone who use Google +