According to Google’s Chief Executive Larry Page, Google+ has become a robust competitor in the social network space, with 90 million users registered since June 2011.
A Wall Street journal points out that Google+ is more like a virtual ghost town compared to its biggest rival Facebook. The data from the research firm comScore shows that Google+ users are signed up, but not actually using much Google’s Social network. Users stay an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ (September to January), compared to six to seven hours on Facebook each month for the same period. Unfortunately the report didn’t include mobile data usage.
Google is making a long-term bet as it hasn’t yet approached companies to advertise on Google+. Unfortunately some web marketers that tested Google+ says that their brand messages haven’t had the impact on consumers they expected. But Google also uses the networking site as an auxiliary for other Google services, such as personalized search results, including results from Google+. Google claims that comScore’s data is “dramatically lower” than their internal data.
Still most Google+ partners are underwhelmed by the lack of user interest and user activity. Intel for instance has 360.000 Google+ subscribers, but get only dozens of comments on its posts whereas on Facebook the company has nine million “fans” and gets thousands of comments there.
“Google+ doesn’t have the same degree of vibrancy than Facebook, Twitter or even Pinterest has at the moment” said David Cohen. The executive vice president of McCann Erickson commented “Without active engagement, Google+ will not be attractive to advertisers.”
So even if Google approaches the companies to advertise on Google+, it might be too late for Google’s social network if the costumers have already moved into other networks such as Pinterest or Tumblr.
Google will release a new interface in a near future, maybe this will drive more people to their social network, but honestly with Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter, there is enough content atm.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion Google+ is just a social network without future because they just trying to copy Facebook and Twitter.Even the newest social network Pinterest has a unique character. The only unique characteristic of Google+ is the group hangouts. I agree that there are million of users registered there (I am as well) but are they really using it?
ReplyDeleteI think that the google + never took up facebook. It interface of the ggogle + was not very friendly. The moment you log in you just think what next you can do in google+ while in the facebook there are quiet a lot of things which can be done and it is more user friendly.
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