Larry Page On Google+: Over 10 Million Users, 1 Billion Items Shared | Hacker News Reader

Larry Page On Google+: Over 10 Million Users, 1 Billion Items Shared

techcrunch.com

52 pointsssclafani49 comments

look at the comments on https://plus.google.com/106189723444098348646/posts/dRtqKJCb... (larry page's original post). why do people do this? i'm assuming they're random people on the internet. why do they feel the need to publicly associate themselves with a huge company's quarterly results? is it something like wanting to be seen with the cool kids at school? it goes on and on - pages and pages of "google!!!11!!". their own fragment of the american dream? or maybe people within google jockeying for visibility? perhaps people comment ironically - a bit like photobombing?

i suppose you could respond with "andrew, why do you post on hn asking q like this?". and i guess there's some kind of cachet in not being in the crowd. but i really do find it odd. i can only imagine myself making a comment like that if i was in some kind of super-happy-smashed situation like a great party. the context just doesn't fit. are those people really all "hey, yeah" in their real lives at this moment? weird, man.

also, is g+ going to implement vanity urls?

I don't know what to tell you. What's the difference between this and cheering at a sporting event? People draw tribal boundaries where they want to. (I'm reminded of The Onion t-shirt that says "the sports team from my area is superior to the sports team from your area").

that's a good comparison. i'm just surprised people are the same with companies - particularly with google. people here in chile are pretty fanatical about football, but i can't imagine them posting the same kind of comments on, say, some mining company's web page. so what's the difference? is this specific to web companies? social media [i guess maybe this]?

thinking more, i guess it's the whole identifying with brands thing. so google is now like apple or nike? again, i suppose it's obvious, but i wasn't aware that google was that kind of company. i guess it changed? what do people own that they've got from google? could it be android that's driving this? what's making people identify with google?

going back to the "hey yeah" feeling. i've felt that with sport, sure. but do people really feel it with quarterly earnings? this isn't just snobbery - you grow up with a football team. i don't think i would have known what quarterly results were until i was, say, 20. can something you learn that late connect in the same way?

I think it's an experience thing. Everyone uses Google; they identify with the company because they see their product every day. Google controls their Internet experience, not to mention their Emacs, Docs, and Calendar. As to why they comment on Larry Page's report to the investors... it's probably because they can. Larry Page is a celebrity, and people like celebrities. When you can send a message to him for all to see, you feel some innate desire to do so. (I don't do this, because I know that Larry Page should not give a fuck about what I think. Other people are more self-confident, I guess :)

Other companies incite the emotional response in the opposite direction: nobody likes Bank of America, Comcast, or Best Buy, even though most people have no negative experiences with those companies.

It would be hard to do this for a coal company because few coal companies deal too directly with the consumer, and even people who buy charcoal to grill with at home often do not get too attached to one brand since charcoal is close to being a commodity (yes, there are some people with strong opinions on this, but most people do not have them).

But I suspect you will find this in every field where a consumer will be highly invested in the product, and especially in fields where their use of the product can be publicly seen, and even more so when it is publicly seen and thought (rightly or wrongly) to say something about the user. Many people are very proud of the type of car they drive. Most people who ride motorcycles have very strong opinions about the different brands and styles available. Many people (certainly not all, but many) who drive a Prius do so as much because they think it says something about them as for any other reason.

As others have said, people will find different forms of tribalism in just about any public activity.

Have you ever clicked a trending topic on Twitter? Yes, people really are that vacuous. Lots of them.

Alot of people derive pleasure from seeing a product that they use yield success to its company. They're called fans (or the more derogatory term, fanboys).

Organizations relies upon these types of fans to spread the word about a product, service, or concept that they deem worthy of sharing. It's how our consumerism world goes 'round, and this association gives fans an ego boost when the rest of the consumers catch on to what they're fans of.

Maybe you associate more with the "hipster" type of fan-- one who is an early adopter and decries the product once it "goes mainstream". If you like something that no one else likes, perhaps you jealously guard it, never mentioning it to anyone else. Once it goes mainstream, you trash on it, proud of not "being in the crowd" and (as in this case) shaking your head in disbelief at the humanity of it.

tl;dr: "I liked Google when they were BackRub at Stanford. You'd probably never heard of them."

that's the kind of criticism i was trying to fend off with the second paragraph. it's more surprise that anyone would do this than disdain for the other team. i think. but maybe i do need to get some skinnier jeans.

Shareholders?

Humans are hard-coded to form tribes. Remember high school? Google vs. Apple and Google vs. Facebook is like Chess vs. Football. Everyone takes sides, and everyone identifies with the side they took.

The only way to avoid this is to be very introspective and realize that taking sides is not worth being proud of: anyone can take sides, and anyone can switch sides with no effort or intelligence required. I try to do this; I like Google+ better than Facebook, so I simply use Google+ and remind my friends that they should try it. But if they want to use Facebook; fine... get my updates from somewhere else.

Similarly, there are things I'm fanboy-ish about, but these are usually things that I've invested intellectual effort into: Perl, Linux, Emacs, Free software. I get fanboyish about these topics because I've spend a good part of each day trying to make these communities better than they already are. So of course I want you to "make the jump"; that way, you can appreciate my work, which will motivate me to do more.

This is tribalism too, but I hope it's a "higher level" form.

Very insightful.

I'd also add that G+'s closed nature (invite only) has made the people who are in (and I'm one of those) feel a bit like they're all part of the same little family. Inhibitions are very low. This could change once the floodgates are open.

Yeah, I definitely get a bit of that "family feel" from Google+.

Back when Facebook was brand new, I remember not being able to join because my school was not good enough. Then we were added to the good list, and it felt like you had to join because you had earned the right to. Then they opened it up to everyone and it just felt cheap.

Because they care about "why" they do things. This explains everything:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

"At 10 million users, the network has already accumulated 13 percent of Facebook's 750 million users in two weeks".

My math skills aren't what they used to be but 10m != 13% of 750m. 13% of 750,000,000 = 97,500,000. I think we're looking at ~1.3% ;)

This has been updated to say 1.3% in the article

It's called eventual consistency :)

I'm happy for Google and it's success, but everyone's measuring the wrong statistics. Raw number of users isn't nearly as important as their interconnectedness. Facebook started at one school, moved to three, etc. Each new user was likely to encounter a number of people they knew using the service, and there was an instant value proposition for them. I don't get that sense from G+. Sure, there's millions of nerds on it, but I don't know many of them. Currently I have 3 real life friends using it, and a few people from school. The rest of my interaction with G+ consists of following people like Matt Cutts and Guido van Rossum. Don't get me wrong, that's an awesome feature, but I don't see it as being sufficient to bring the NORPs on board. I wouldn't be surprised to see G+'s growth plateau after the early adopters have all gotten their invites, until there's some value proposition for the current facebook/twitter crowd.

On a tangentially related note, how awesome is it that there are 10 million early adopters out there?

While I've seen the usual batch of tech early adopters, I've also seen a large number of high school and college friends that are not in tech who have accounts and are using them. Granted, it's nowhere near the facebook level of penetration but my actual interactions with friends on it have been of higher quality (I barely use facebook so that may have a strongly confounding effect on my results), largely because I can control who different types of content goes to.

I think the pervasiveness of G+ is going to go a long way in continuing to drive adoption and use. Facebook feels like a place I go to waste time, while G+ is always there when I'm inside of anything google (and between gmail, calendar and search that's at least once or twice an hour).

That's my hope as well. I can see G+ actually being a productivity enchancer, rather than destroyer like facebook.

YMMV on the non-geek uptake. I have family members in tech who are all over facebook, twitter, linkedin, and whatnot who still haven't signed up for an account on G+, so we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

By the time, I got onto G+, almost all my friends were on there. Yes, we're all geeks.

I'm more than happy to keep it geeky over there!

How does this number compare to that of Wave/Buzz? I would not be surprised if Wave/Buzz garnered similar numbers when they were first released.

Probably not. I use Buzz quite a bit and noticed that more of my contacts are using G+ than they did Buzz.

"users are sharing 1 billion items per day"

"the network has already accumulated 13 percent of Facebook’s 750 million users in two weeks"

Now, that's impressive

It would be more impressive if TechCrunch were better at math... 13% of Facebook's monthly active users would be 100 million, not 10 million.

I was thinking this too. How could the editor not catch this?

They don't have editors.

10 / 750 equal to 1.3%

Am I missing something?

Nope. Techcrunch just did their math wrong.

Still, 10MM users in 2 Weeks in a closed-invite-beta. I know, they have a 1B userbase but it means something is really buzzing this time.

Sharing a billion items per day is obviously false as it would imply 100 items shared per user on average.

Unless they're counting everyone you're sharing to as a different "share"?

and +1s

That must be how they are counting it. If larry page shares or +1's 10 things, then it would count as 1M shares.

I doubt they're counting once per recipient, but people could easily be sharing 100 items on average if you count photos , reshares, and +1's.

Don't forget comments!

Comments make up the bulk of my activity.

I think hangout use statistics would be really interesting. anybody got any idea/estimate about those ?

Key difference: Facebook has 750 million active users. Google+ has 10 million users.

Funnily enough, all users on G+ could be considered 30 day actives and probably most of them 7 day actives by virtue of the fact that the service is so young :)

That’s not only funny, that’s also why said difference is currently meaningless. The ten million users are also active users. The interesting question will be whether they will still be in a month (or, alternatively, whether Google+ gains so many new users that a few million lost active users don’t matter).

I wouldn't call Facebook's 750 million users active users either.

They are. Facebook is absolutely telling the truth about this metric. 750 million active users in the last 30 days, 50% of that daily and 80% of 750mil weekly.

That does not mean 750 million individual humans, guaranteed.

Why not? Do you have insight into how Facebook calculates that number?

Are you serious?

MSN Messenger has >300 million users. QQ has three times that. Why do you find it so inconceivable that Facebook has 750 million active users?

I don't have time for the Socratic method.

Okay, I'll spell it out for you in capital letters:

NUMBER OF USER ACCOUNTS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS NUMBER OF INDIVIDUAL PERSONS. THE NUMBER OF USER ACCOUNTS IS ALWAYS HIGHER THAN NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS.

Did that help?

I don't mean to nitpick, I'm genuinely curious: how do you know Facebook is telling the truth about the figures?

I always assumed they were telling the truth because they're legally bound to (and because if they're caught lying, it would suck badly for them). I'm just wondering if you have any more info than that, since you seem so emphatic about it.

Facebook only reports 30-day active user numbers.

It's pretty hard to be a Google+ user at this point and not be considered "active" - unless you disregard signing up as activity. I suppose you could argue a lot of people are signing up and not using the service at all, but my anecdotal observation is entirely the opposite of that. The people who sign up are embracing it in a big way.

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