Google+ Study Reveals Minimal Social Activity, Weak User Engagement
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
It is impossible to make meaningful statements about Google+ user engagement by looking at only public posts.
In 2012, I've created eighteen public posts, often spaced apart by weeks. According to my public history, I barely use Google+. In the same time frame, I've posted hundreds of private posts. My posts are for my friends, and I see no reason to let random internet people read my posts.
Many of my friends have absolutely no public posts, or maybe one when they first join saying "well, I'm here". To an outside observer, it looks like they posted once and left. But if you're in their circles, you'll see that they're posting often, sometimes up to several times an hour.
Unfortunately, the only entity that can provide concrete numbers of active users is Google itself, and they aren't telling.
Facebook is once again feeling more like it's trying to force those social connections into the public domain -- well, let's say the public realm, for it certainly remains their domain. And I'm mindful of getting out of it, at this point. (The IPO seems to be a good event in their... erm, "Timeline", upon which to do so. [1] )
I don't want to lose those connections, though, so perhaps it is time to agitate amongst friends for Google+.
However, I do not want to be forced into a single, worldwide identity. Either personally, or admixed with various professional responsibilities and relationships.
I also don't want to feel an excessive risk of being "unplugged" from Google's services.
If Google wants to "do social", they need to "look at what users want to do". I am surprised at how suddenly apropos my chance browsing of this HN thread -- with its perhaps for some somewhat discomfiting terms -- becomes:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3976791
And, they need to be social, themselves. Enough to provide some real -- if, given scale, not always direct -- support.
When enough people start saying that something is a problem, believe them.
For now, I think I'll use a secondary identity -- not a false one, but a second account -- to participate in Google+. I already have one for casual business contacts. In case the feedback is worth anything, I still fear committing my primary Google identity to the product.
I wonder to what extent Google can enable and protect social dialog where users set the scope and privacy [2], while successfully fostering the advertising revenue that pays for the service and for Google's efforts. The kind of networking for this level of connections still seems to need to supercede any particular, balkanized smaller-scale platform. All of us are continuing to look for the effective and ethical host.
--
[1] Concurrent, I've observed, with another bump in the aggressiveness of their advertising. Not that I begrudge them "paying the bills", but perceived as perhaps a signal of more behind the scenes or to come.
[2] As I think of this, more, I ask whether Google needs to advocate for more transparency, in certain areas some of which include its own participation. What is the relationship with the NSA? Perhaps not all can be revealed, but... well, even the NSA ostensibly works for "the people", for U.S. citizens. And some transparency might ultimately be in everyone's best interest.
You can either assume that "the people" are morons, or that they are competent. Too many leaders seem to speak to the former, these days. Inherently, the Internet -- of which Google is currently an integral part -- speaks to the latter: Empower people by giving them knowledge they need and seek.
What are the people trying to do? Perhaps it's time for Google to pause and really take a look at that. That's what got them to where they are.
> However, I do not want to be forced into a single,
> worldwide identity. Either personally, or admixed with
> various professional responsibilities and relationships.
> I also don't want to feel an excessive risk of being "unplugged" from
> Google's services.
> [...]
> For now, I think I'll use a secondary identity -- not a false one, but a
> second account -- to participate in Google+. I already have one for casual
> business contacts. In case the feedback is worth anything, I still fear
> committing my primary Google identity to the product.
From an admittedly perhaps poorly informed outside perspective, there still seems to be fear and uncertainty (FUD?) around the deactivation of access to Google services and whether and what the side-effects may be.
This may merge somewhat with some of the comments that appear regarding Adsense, et al. Different services, but the outsider observes (and perhaps incorrectly comingles) that when there is a dis-continuation, a clear description of the nature of the problem and/or any communication to resolve it, can seem nearly impossible to get.
Nothing I'm sure you haven't heard/read before -- and, no, I am not qualified to speak to it with any authority, not anecdotally much less from any professional perspective.
I do think there continues to be a... "missing element", from some of Google's current perspective. Or from whatever warped version of that is currently being presented in the media.
Google, users, and advertisers used to be pretty much, for lack of a better perspective, "on the same page". (Yeah, that might also be a pun.)
Without being able to fully evaluate why, there seems to be more arguing going on now, amongst those factions. Perhaps that is really, at core, what is going wrong. (To extent there is something wrong; I mean, Google's not exactly hurting for business.)
I'll stop now. If you've read through this, I've chewed up more than enough of your time.
Regards
P.S. I haven't looked at Pages (I'm approaching feature overload -- taken across the Internet as a whole).
I will say, to that, that sometimes the simplest approach to avoiding co-mingling is simply to establish and maintain separate entities. The old, "no one knows your are a dog" situation and approach. Some people just want to KISS.
Added: Perhaps I am contradicting myself, in this last. And I've seen some of the gamesmanship that (ab)users can created out of unbridled anonymity. But, if I'm going to investing in learning and curating a complex, private-party-platform identity, I guess I need some reassurance going in that the features I need -- e.g. control of scope and identity -- are both present and inviolate.
Rightly or wrongly, some of the initial controversy around Plus and identities there did some real damage to this.
> From an admittedly perhaps poorly informed outside
> perspective, there still seems to be fear and uncertainty
> (FUD?) around the deactivation of access to Google
> services and whether and what the side-effects may be.
> [...]
> Without being able to fully evaluate why, there seems to be
> more arguing going on now, amongst those factions. Perhaps that
> is really, at core, what is going wrong. (To extent there is
> something wrong; I mean, Google's not exactly hurting for
> business.)
I believe that the story "signing up for Google+ endangers your account" is spread online and in the media by companies (one, in particular) whose profits are endangered by Google+ .
Prior to 2011, Google's core businesses were in markets with no large, unethical competitors. That's why there was never a flood of news articles about Maps, or Reader, or GMail -- the competition were basically honest, and used features or user experience to sway users.
Google+ is the first attempt to take on entrenched unethical competition, and that competition's response has been to launch an astroturfed PR offensive. It doesn't matter how many of their accusations are refuted; as long as there's enough doubt to discourage users from signing up for Google+, the PR has served its job.
Microsoft had a similar PR campaign in the mid-00's, to spread fear about Linux and the GPL. I still see occasional echos of this online; commentators posting long-discredited arguments about Linux being insecure, or GPL being viral, etc. I hope that the anti-Google+ campaign is less successful.
I am no Google employee and with the same logic, I can prove that people don't use Google+.
Private Google+ posts are what people call Emails. I have not yet received a single Google+ private post, nor have I sent any.
I use private posts (limited posts, really) to post to, say, my "developers" circle. My non-techy friends don't want to read about Ruby interpreter bugs or the like and it's a way for me not to spam them.
Likewise, my "developers" circle probably aren't interested in reading in-jokes/links/whatever between my friends and I.
It's definitely not like email for me.
Google Contacts is now focused on circles, circles show up in Gmail, and you can control Google Voice activity based on circles. And I imagine this is just the start.
I wonder if getting people to publicly post is really even on the critical path for them at all. If they change their services to be circle-centric and get enough people just to put people in circles, that gives them a ton of social graph data to mine even without posts.
What intrigues me more about the article, is the picture of "waning interest" in G+. My interest in G+ is certainly fading. I might log in one every week or two, and even then it's the same routine; I'll log in, see that it's still the same ghost town it was last week, and then move on.
If I were Google, I'd be much more concerned about keeping people interested in G+, not focusing on how many posts people make or how many millions of people have "upgraded" to G+ only to never return.
Publishing such a report (and those conclusions) by just looking at public posts makes no sense at all. No wonder according to the study very few of those posting public updates never came back. They were probably users trying the service for the first time and had no people in their circles at that moment.