Google+ traffic down 27% in the last two weeks | Hacker News Reader

Google+ traffic down 27% in the last two weeks

dreamgrow.com

49 pointsrmccue63 comments

My experience with G+ has been telling me that it just isn't catching on beyond a small group of my tech friends, and has indeed been fading in use.

Some solid competition in this area was needed, and I think Facebook has been feeling the heat, given some of the changes they've been making. That said, if G+ dies off, I don't think it will necessarily be because of anything that Facebook did. I think that most of the people who I know just don't want to maintain more than one "Facebook-type" site. This probably has a lot to do with why Myspace floundered so rapidly once Facebook gained momentum.

If you still need an invite, your answer lies in that.

I've thrown out invites, and offered to invite a ton of people. Most didn't take me up on it. The ones who would've been most likely to join, had already found a way to join on their own.

Yes, but that's how it will be with everyone. The growth of a social network is driven by having lots of nodes to start from. Google+ doesn't have that; it has a core of techies. My invite is only once removed from a Google employee and then only because I asked my roommate before my Googler friends.

I stopped encouraging people to join up when I saw how badly Google were handling the pseudonym issue. I no longer believe they're any more fit to run a social network than Facebook.

Misleading headline. Google+ traffic down 27% in the last two weeks [among Alexa toolbar users].

I've never understood how Alexa stats are considered relevant. No-one I know - from the savviest sysadmin who only browses in lynx to the most malware-infested bloated-PC user - has ever used Alexa toolbar. I once installed it a long time ago on some random machine just to look at it and uninstalled it again. How is their traffic 'representative'?

You can make this claim for any headline referencing web traffic figures, and while it weakens the headline, losing a quarter traffic over 2 weeks in any market is still noteworthy at least to me.

FWIW, addons.mozilla claims 56,000 users for the Alexa Firefox toolbar alone.

56k is quite a few, but the top extensions have millions of users.

I'd imagine the vast majority of Alexa Toolbar users get it bundled with other software they're installing.

Does Gallup poll every US citizen? These stats are sufficiently random to mirror trends, especially when there's not many other ways of getting this information.

Those statistics are enough to sample the entire population only if it is a fair sampling, but I think the point is that Alexa toolbar users are not a fair sampling of Internet users in general, and hence the claiming that 27% figure applies to all 'net users is inaccurate and misleading.

It is closer to fair sampling than you think, since the average internet user is more likely to install toolbars unlike the technogeek niches that we hang out in. Also, it's more useful for relative changes like drops and increases rather than absolute percentages.

Also, it's one of the only few samplings we have, unfortunately.

I think you missed my reference to your specific point.

"No-one I know - from the savviest sysadmin who only browses in lynx to the most malware-infested bloated-PC user - has ever used Alexa toolbar."

I'm one of "those guys" who everyone comes to in order to get their shitty computer fixed for free. I've seen a lot of "normal users". I do not think that Alexa users are a representative sample based on what I've seen.

I've never understood how Alexa stats are considered relevant.

Because all outside web statistic providers suck.

Currently, I have 149 people in my circles. 10% of them are google employees, but they contribute 2/3 of the items in my feed. Not sure if this matches anyone else's experience. Most of my non-technical family and friends tried it out for a week or so, then went back to facebook.

Facebook also copied quite a few of Google+'s features recently so most of my non technical friends are less willing to try google+ compared to a when it first came out.

It is a little worse here, I would say that 80% of the items from my feed are from google employees. When I change to filter only my friends the feed is almost depressing, always around 3 posts/day with around 100 people in my circles.

I don't know about other people's experience, but for me the problem is that the first adopters that actually used g+ were techies like me, so my feed was just full of people posting links to technical articles and having elaborate flame wars about this browser vs that or this site vs that.

which is great, but that's google reader-ish. not facebook. nobody would post anything social (i.e. we just got married, here are photos. or we just got a dog. or happy birthday!).

I was excited about G+ at first, but decided that their invitation-only game to drive up demand is childish and that I will wait for them to open up for everyone, like I did with gmail back then. Then they started to strictly enforce a stupid, stupid real name policy, so I decided no to bother. The more they push that stupid, unwanted policy against their users, the more I actually root for FB to "win" the social network battle.

Facebook (loosely) enforces the same policy.

I don't use FB either. I had a higher opinion of Google, as many other people also hoped G+ would be a social network made right. But enforcing stupid policies right from the start against early adopters is ridiculous, no matter what the policy in question actually is. This early in the game they simply can not afford alienating enthusiastic early users, but they're doing exactly that. If this is the shape of the things to yet come, it is no wonder that users are deciding no to bother any more.

I'm pretty certain that "invitation only" wasn't a ploy to drive up demand; it was just a way to make sure they could scale up the number of users in some sane fashion.

I'm with you, none of my no-techies friends are on G+.

Wow! I'm sure they did not know about I either!

Imagine that my school mates (those in my Facebook account) still use hotmail, almost none of them uses gmail.

Facebook started with college students. G+ started with Google employees. Fatal mistake from the start.

G+ should've started without invites. Open to everyone.

According to a friend of mine who's young, single, male, and tech-oriented, his demographic will go where college-age women go. G+ is a weinerfest, Facebook isn't. It's a no-brainer for him.

Sucks for Google. I hope they don't kill off G+ even if it falters. Facebook needs a competitor to keep them in check.

> Facebook started with college students. G+ started with Google employees. Fatal mistake from the start.

I don't see why starting a tool from inside use is fatal. Wasn't it the case for gmail? For me gmail is still the best webmail around.

I see many people burying Google plus these days, I'd say wait and see. I know many people who don't have facebooks but have gmails, they would enjoy a bit of social networking from their mails but won't bother opening another tab.

And there is the hidden killer feature: instant uploading of your phone's pics. If done well, I will never again have to sync my SD card, that's really neat.

You can be the only person in the world using gmail, and still have a use for it. Not so for social networks.

It's 2011. If you're not already on a social network, you really don't want to be on a social network.

well..except for very young kids. Once they decide they want to get on a social network, they have some flexibility since they're still building their real-life social network.

> If you're not already on a social network, you really don't want to be on a social network. well..except for very young kids.

Maybe I am different. I'm mid-age, working in Web since birth of Internet, have had no real SNS, and would like to have one, so I can share baby pics. What I don't need is another url and password and contact list, etc. So Google plus is perfect for me. I'm alone in this case?

Except that Google would not allow very young kids into Google+, by banning their account permanently when they try to get in.

> Wasn't it the case for gmail? For me gmail is still the best webmail around.

You dont need other people to use gmail to be able to use gmail. Email is standardized, so gmail as a client could be evaluated on its own merits. Since it was good, usage grew. There were no external factors outside gmail which could slow down gmails growth.

Social networks show network effects. You cant use a new social network with your real social network being somewhere else. If the initial growth is slow, the early adopters will be pretty alone there, for a long time. The new network has to have advantages over the old to justify the initial isolation period. FB had advantages over MySpace, so users slowly crept over. G+ had basically nothing over FB other than this "not evil" label they gave themselves. Then they started strictly enforcing a real name policy, which many users perceive as evil, and the "no evil" label is perceived as a blatant lie. This removes their (imho) main advantage over FB, and without a net gain, less and less people bother to try.

As Tom Anderson also argued a while ago: it's not a facebook-competitor in its current form yet, but that doesn't matter.

What matters is that G+ is proving to be a nice blend between twitter and a blogging platform. When large content-creators switch to G+ (and a lot of them are, because of 1. followers, 2. larger posts, and 3. comments) their audience will slowly move over to G+ as well.

I will not be surprised if this will gradually result in more facebook-like activity (closer social contact, between friends) on G+.

After 'wave' being killed off I figure I'll give any google service that is launched 6 months before I try it out, that may save me some time invested into google 'duds'.

Of course, that is a self fulfilling prophesy, by not trying it out I make it more likely that the service gets killed and if enough people think like me then that's how it will go.

I wonder if google factored that effect in when they killed off wave.

They've already blundered with the Real Name policy and they don't want to back off.

I'd use Google+ more if the default view didn't show everybody's posts. There's some people I'd like to follow but only want to show when I select a specific stream because they're noisier than everybody else on the platform. Instead, if I want to follow them at all they dominate the primary view. So my choice appears to be to ignore them completely, or live with their posts cluttering the interface unless I navigate to each sub-circle to see everybody else's posts. There needs to be a way to turn off some users's content from the primary stream while still following them. Maybe there is, and I'm just not aware of it.

That's actually a big part of why I closed my Facebook account. They used to allow you to see the photo stream by default, which was fine. Then they took that away and it was endless noise without some mandatory clicking. It simply wasn't worth it for me, so I left. G+ is starting off on the same foot, but with the added hurt of nobody posting anything interesting to it; the options for me are really annoying noise, slightly less annoying noise or silence. Not exactly useful...

This feels like Wave 2.0. Google created an incredible product, but botched the launch by keeping it shut down for too long, and now the newness has worn off. Good luck getting people excited when it finally is open to the public.

That's not to say that a social network can't build steam over time (after all that's exactly what Facebook did). But the problem here is that the role of Facebook and social networking is much more well defined than it was when MySpace was the leader. At that time everybody knew these sites were cool, but the value proposition wasn't completely apparent.

I agree that they've squandered the initial momentum. This is a lesson everybody can learn from Apple: make a big splash on day one. Maybe MVP and iteration is a good approach for a new startup but when you're going toe-to-toe with a juggernaut like Facebook you need to land that first punch.

It gets worse though. I suspect I'm not the only person for whom their heavy handed real name policy was the final impetus to unplug from their information harvesting network altogether. G+ may actually backfire on them.

I agree. Not only the real name policy but the stories about shutting down access to other Google services is pretty frightening to a nobody like me. Especially when Google comes out and claims that these anecdotes are not true and that the people were banned for other nebulous reasons. Well they may or may not be. Google puts a lot of faith in their machines. If there's one thing I've learned about Google: avoid doing anything that might require some sort of intervention by them to fix your account--you won't be able to contact anyone and they just don't care unless you're famous. Someone like me will just languish in the cogs. The only times they care are when someone famous/influential gets inconvenienced or the other case is when a large group of users are affected and they have to dust off the backups. Bottom line: I'm pretty sure that if something strange happened--Google will just say it's my fault. For me as one little user: not worth the risk.

This real names/ban hammer thing is having a chilling effect.

I haven't signed up on G+ and I never will, you know why? Because, AFAIK, you can only be signed up after G+ member invites you! This is to ensure everyone is real and everything's in order but it also keeps me stay away from G+.

You can sign up from the link in the article. I just did. Funny thing is, I had a friend invite me a month back, and it wouldn't work because Google closed the invite system. In that month, he and all my other friends have stopped using it, so I sign up and see nothing now. That doesn't compel me to use it...

The reason, IMO, it is already fading is simple: lack of critical mass. There was initial excitement, then people realized most/all of their friends were still on FB, so they stopped posting. This is exactly what happened to me. All my friends no longer post on G+, and are back to FB.

Critical mass and a compelling reason to use it over Facebook. Most people just don't have the hate for Facebook that some in the tech community have. That was the main thing people said to me when I tried to get them on G+ "Why would I use this over Facebook?".

It hasn't hit the critical mass to make it worthwhile. There is almost no value proposition to the user over their existing social networks where they know their friends are posting stuff. I agree that google should be using the considerable resources at their disposal to get more users.

For me, only my closer friends are on G+. Unfortunately, this is the same group of people who don't post on FB, so similarly, my G+ is pretty quiet. It's nice though - really cuts out the "noise". In a way, I don't mind if it stays this way.

For now I like G+ because it's a much better Twitter: I can follow interesting people who write interesting posts, and have interesting discussions with comments. If this will work in the long run is to be seen.

Kind of early and inevitable to have a slow down. The real push hasn't begun yet. But if I were Google, I would make it soon. Copy Facebook and go after the college crowd, especially with back to school going on. Most importantly, get the Gagas and Biebers of the world on there and engaging. Sadly, that is what is drives social networks. Still way too early to call it dead or anything, but I would like less testing and more action.

Also if you think the name thing has anything to do with mass adoption, you are stuck in the tech bubble.

Except getting Lady Gaga onto Google+ won't do much good since nobody would be able to find her. Most of her fans wouldn't think to search for Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

Not sure what your point is. If you actually think Google would force her to use her real name, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. If it is some point about the name wars, it has very little to do with Google+'s traction.

The figures are very insufficient to draw any conclusion. How was the trafic before the first of august ? Also, a decrease from 3% to 2% during summer has many possible explanations.

There is still an exclusion for Apps users. The intersection of Apps users and most prolific contributors on existing social networks should not be underestimated.

From some browsing on Google + , I feel that many aren't using circles the right way. I am able to see random people's post planning for trek during the weekend. If it were FB, I might not have seen it. Maybe I would have been prompted to 'add as friend' .

I've had a gmail account for years yet I still have not received an invitation from google to join G+ ... so why should I care about its success or failure when I cannot even use it yet???

Invite only.

Until that changes, none of this is relevant.

If you look at latest numbers in the table it's already down 37%

I think we don't need anyone to show us numbers or stats that Google+ is not gaining traction. We already know that, just compare your Facebook usage vs G+ usage. Compare the # of friends who talk about Facebook vs. G+. Compare the # of non-techie friends who signed up for G+. It's a no-brainer, we all know this deep down. G+ is going nowhere.

I'm not sure how telling any of this is, usage and traffic are going to rise and fall after the initial launch I'm sure it was expected mainly because the market for social networks is already saturated. Keeping and eye on traffic in this initial stage is as useless as watching stock prices go up and down everyday.

The service will have at least another launch as it gets out of beta and offers an API and so forth and traffic will probably rise then.

As for having a mostly techie userbase it's just where it's market penetration starts, and techies are the most likely to adopt a new invite only app. I'm sure other demographics will take notice when everyone has the +Name on the navigation bar and the app's features are integrated with most of Google's services.

As for having a mostly techie userbase it's just where it's market penetration starts, and techies are the most likely to adopt a new invite only app.

And that's also where it's market penetration ends. Non-techies don't want to deal with invite stuff, so they don't join Google+. Now the only people on Google+ are techies, and that's where it's going to stay until Google kills it off in a few months like they've done will most of their other recent projects like this.

Give me one good reason why non-techies would ever join a social networking site filled with techies when they already have Facebook that fulfills all their needs?

It will stop being invite only eventually, and I don't think Google is going to kill the project it's along term play that they are investing a lot in, and as integrates with all of Google's other services it'll become more valuable and get exposed to the millions using those services.

It will stop being invite only eventually

And why will that matter? It doesn't change the point I mentioned. Why would a non-techie join a social networking site filled with techies?

And Google will kill Google+ because people will stop using it and it won't make sense to keep such a large project going without a userbase.

Of course it will. It's a bottleneck, and once it's unrestricted and there is no friction to joining they will market it to the non-techies. And regardless even a techie exclusive user-base is far from worthless.

There is still no option to automatically cross-post to your facebook. Wait until the G+ platform launches.

I'm waiting for that ability for Twitter myself. If they could mesh the G+ stream with my Twitter stream, I might be compelled to use it. Buzz got this wrong too, I'm not sure Google understands yet that they can play nice with others and succeed; in fact they have to to succeed. They seem to have their eyes set pretty squarely on a walled garden that can't be extended outside their services, at least so far.

Check out Tweetdeck. It does pretty much exactly what you're looking for with FB and Twitter (and whatever other networks you use). G+ just hasn't opened up an API yet for anyone to tap into it.

I've used Tweetdeck before. Really nice Twitter app, but I don't use FB so there's no need to mesh the 2. My point is, I use Twitter and it serves me well. Without Twitter integration into G+, I have little incentive to use G+. All the friends I care about are already on Twitter, only one or two are on G+. Unless I can read my Twitter feed in G+ in addition to reading my G+ feed, it's pretty useless for me right now. Maybe when they release an API I'll come back and check it out. Thanks for the suggestion either way.

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