Teenagers Will, Like, Totally Abandon Facebook for Google+ | Hacker News Reader

Teenagers Will, Like, Totally Abandon Facebook for Google+

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I am interested in seeing how they collected their data. If "25% said they would be using Google+ more often" then that implies that more than 25% of the 2000 teens surveyed have used Google+. That seems a bit to high for me considering out of the 1800 people in my high school only two people(twins, other then myself, have even used Google+. The majority in my school (Yes, gross over generalization)that uses Facebook don't even like it. The only reason they use it is because they wan't to socialize with their friends, but know of no other way to communicate through a network (Sorry MySpace). In other words, the only reason people use Facebook is because everyone uses Facebook. I hope you can see the fallacy in that.

I do see Google+ slowly taking away from Facebook's hold on teenagers, but I cannot see a complete transition from Facebook to Google+ happening. Perhaps a small group of teens that go into the world of Google+ with an exponential growth, similar with MySpace and Facebook. I see the beginning process being similar, but not a complete end of teenagers on Facebook, but rather just a slightly lower activity level as people use both Google+ and Facebook, or solely use the former.

P.S. How did 14-17 year olds even get a hold of a Google+ account when you have to be 18 or older =P

P.S.S. How was this comment. This is my first comment on Hacker News. Hope this was a quality post.

Very good first post on HN. Hope to see more of you here.

The article is nothing more than Google's anti-Facebook propaganda.

Most articles, if not all, have a layer of influence from the writer. Even something as simple as a top 10 list includes some bias. The bias exists in what the writer excludes and includes in the article. Even what I'm writing right now has some bias in it. Instead of saying "Even something such as a top 10 list" I said "Even something as simple as a top 10 list".

Anti-Facebook? More like pro-pageviews!

And yet it's very positive about Facebook's upcoming timeline?

It is to preserve the plausibility of an unbiased viewpoint.

> The only reason they use it is because they wan't to socialize with their friends, but know of no other way to communicate through a network (Sorry MySpace).

Well, there's plenty of ways to communicate! And plenty of ways to say something publically, too. I think one key thing Facebook has that other (currently well-known) things don't is the area between the two -- ability to write something directed at a specific person, which is also public. Namely, making a post on their wall. I was very surprised to learn Google+ doesn't do this when it was being touted as a replacement for Facebook. IMO, Google+ is actually more like LiveJournal but without threaded comments.

One of my co-workers said that her high school son, and all his friends, use Google Buzz very frequently. I haven't talked to her since Google just announced they were closing it down, but what is your report "from the trenches" of high school regarding Google Buzz? Does anyone use it? Buzz has a lower age requirement I think.

Also, Buzz will be closed very soon.

Isn't this sentiment true every time Facebook makes changes to their UI? There's always some user backlash immediately following its release, but after a few weeks everything settles and returns to the status quo.

I have no doubt that Facebook extensively tests their changes to the UI features with a focus on how much more time people spend on Facebook. For example, the lightbox photo UI was panned as being confusing and slow, but brings in an extra billion (+5%) photo views a day [1].

While 48% of teens claim that they try to ignore or see no real value in the ticker, I bet that a large chunk of them are clicking on it (whether they consciously want to or not).

[1]: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/developi...

> For example, the lightbox photo UI was panned as being confusing and slow, but brings in an extra billion (+5%) photo views a day [1].

If the interface is confusing, then it sounds like those extra billion image views a day were probably accidental -- which would simply mean wasted bandwidth (and money) for Facebook. Unless those extra image views somehow also produced additional ad impressions for Facebook or something like that, then I'm not sure why they'd consider having to serve up more images a success if people were happier using the old system...

It's somewhat amusing to see these surveys and articles by people who don't really understand the Gatekeeper system that Facebook uses for deployment and the vast amounts of data they collect about user behaviour.

Facebook can do test rollouts of features to specific segments of their users and exactly measure the impact. In comparison, making a survey gives you crap data that tells you nothing about how the usage patterns of Facebook will change. Because what people say they will do and what they actually do are two different things, and Facebook keeps very quiet about the actual patterns.

Sometimes though you can infer that announced features actually wasn't a success. They'll just be quietly rolled back or changed or never rolled out to the entire userbase. What happened to Timeline, for example?

I'm a teenager in a public high school, and I have not seen a single person use Google+. This is not because Google+ is age limited, or because Google+ is inferior, but because nobody uses Google+. Already, most people I know (including non "techies"), use Facebook primarily for chat. The rest of the Facebook features are just "extra", and used occasionally. Unless Google can pull something revolutionary out of their hat (or Facebook has a major blunder) in regards to chat, they aren't going to be able to pull the teenage community over.

Note that this is from my personal experiences, and has a high probability of being completely wrong when you look at a broader population.

Now that seems weird. Thanks for sharing, but, really:

  Unless Google can pull something revolutionary out of their 
  hat (or Facebook has a major blunder) in regards to chat

Don't you know about GTalk? Or what would you add to it, to get to FB chat level? Because it's basically the ~same thing~, based on the same technology (xmpp).

I don't know if others feel this way, but I don't find Google's UI outside of search very appealing. And that includes Gmail, which is where a good chunk of GTalk conversations happen. Couple that with email in general not being a pleasant experience for many, and you have a lot of people who don't want to hang out on GTalk. Also, keep in mind that chat was "magically" sprung upon Facebook users when it launched; they didn't have to sign up for yet another account and most of one's friends were already there. It was as simple as clicking on a person's name and typing.

Thanks, very interesting.

Regarding GTalk / GMail: I just want to point out that GTalk features a decent mobile client (at least for Android, WebOS - no idea about the rest), a desktop client (at least for Windows?) and a widget that you can use not only in GMail (think google.com/ig for example). Or - connect with a decent 3rd party IM app on just about every OS.

Which are all fine if you're using GTalk. However, if all your friends use FB chat, you're probably not going to switch.

Back when I was in middle/high school, people I knew used AIM, not Yahoo Messenger, or MSN Messenger because that's where their friends were. The fact that they were essentially the same just served to enforce the point that AIM would have had to make a very major blunder for anyone to switch. The same holds for facebook chat.

I know about GTalk, and have used it in the past, but nobody uses it, possibly because nobody knows about it. The extent of most people's interactions with GMail are the Inbox and the Send Message workflow. Few people bother setting up contacts in GMail (it's all in their phones), and even fewer will actually click on a contact to be able to see the "Invite To Chat" button.

This study just completely contradicts what I have observed. The younger people I know look at FaceBook as something close to a force of nature. If you listen closely you can even hear it in how they talk. They don't 'post it to Facebook' they 'post it', they don't 'look at your photos on Facebook' they 'look at your photos' Maybe I'm reading too much into that but it's hard for me to understand who these people are seeking an alternative to something that is such a fixture in their lives that they don't even have to refer to it by name anymore.

I observed the exact opposite. If I hear two teens talking (literally any two), almost every second word I hear is Facebook.

That's not the exact opposite because they are still talking about Facebook.

Well, yes, the logical statements are not opposites, but the frequency of the F-word is.

Well fuck, that makes a lot of fucking sense.

I think the big difference people are looking past is that when people left myspace for facebook, facebook was clearly better. With Google+ vs. Facebook this is not the case. Facebook is still a much better platform with a better UI, more features, and more mature developer resources. The numbers facebook puts out clearly contrast all the articles saying how they will be replaced etc. They're on track to hit a billion users, period.

One of the main reasons the teenagers I know are possibly considering using Google+ over Facebook is because Google+ isn't blocked by our school web filter yet :P

(They can get around it on their personal devices with proxies, but the computers owned by the school are pretty well locked down)

I honestly don't think Google+ will ever have more traction than Facebook, at least with the teenage crowd.

One thing to remember is that Facebook's e-mail is an outright flop -- I have never once corresponded with an @facebook.com address -- whereas tons of teens use Gmail on a routine basis. Every Gmail user is now (more or less) a Google+ user. Google could probably use that to drive a lot of Google+ adoption.

Does anyone have a @facebook.com other than Facebook employees?

Yes, I do have one but I only used it once to test how it works.

Facebook employees use @fb.com, everyone on facebook has vanity_username@facebook.com

"[W]hereas tons of teens use Gmail on a routine basis."

How many teens use Gmail? Despite Gmail's popularity among techies, I seem to recall that they only have like 5% market share, so I'm guessing most teenagers don't use Gmail.

Most teens and pre-teens I know (by living with a teen brother) use Hotmail. I've seen chain letters with hundreds of emails (yes, they still happen) and there's hardly a @gmail.com in sight.

Do teenagers still say "like" and "totally"?

Come to think of it, is teenage slang far slower-moving than I had always thought? When not being deliberately driven by Ninja Turtles or Clueless, that is?

I've heard "like", but rarely if ever "totally".

Probably because "totally" was too long, and is now just shortened to "totes".

You're right. I forgot about that.

People also say "totes muhgotes" (spelled phonetically)

That is hecka totes wack.

Yeah, my first thought was "Will they also speak in slang from 30 years ago?"

I think 'like' is still said a lot but not 'totally'. Unless something changed in the 6 years since I graduated from high school.

With teenagers, "considering X" is not well correlated with "doing X".

Absolutely, they will happily download 10 IM programs and keep them all running at the same time, able to multi-task between a half dozen communication channels. I think any social network will dominate a teenager's attention.

Edit to my own comment, should be "I don't think any social network will dominate a teenager's attention."

Isn't that true for just about all demographic groups?

Speaking as the parent of two teenagers, I can safely say -- no, I don't think so :) Teenagers are a whole different category of angsty indecision.

I've got a friend group of a few hundred high schoolers (high schooler myself.) While many complain about changes in Facebook, none of them ever do anything about.

I have a few friends who have decided to leave Facebook, but it's always because they don't like the addiction aspect of it, not any trivial changes Facebook chooses to make.

That said, I really like the new features rolling out. They are definitely an improvement (except for the timeline, that shit's dumb.)

What exactly is the facebook news ticker?

I stopped using Facebook a few months ago.

I think they're talking about a sidebar on the top right that has a real-time feed of your friends likes and comments and stuff. I use facebook a bit, but I have't entirely kept up with the terminology.

When I got a Google Plus invite I invited my entire Facebook friend list to it, via exporting Yahoo contacts to GMail, and selecting all the emails. Of the 400+ people I invited, 21 ha e accepted their invitation. Less of my friends use it than that though, maybe 5.

This is only relevant because I'm a teenager.

Citation, like, needed or whatever.

Where's the sex? No sex, no teenage adoption.

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