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The U.K.'s Daily Mail stirred up a spit storm when it ran a story titled "Traffic Plunges for Google+ as 60 Percent of Users Log Off." That's actually true, 60 percent of active users did ditch Google's social network after it was opened to the public, but only after traffic spiked by a whopping 1,200 percent. Take away that 60 percent and what you're left with is nearly a five-fold increase in traffic (480 percent), which tells quite a different story than the headline.
Mike Elgan, a prominent columnist, blogger, and Google+ user called the headline "idiotic" and "misleading," while Forbes called it "a little bit of straining for a story." Are either of these perspectives on the Daily Mail's reporting fair?
The Daily Mail deduces that Google's social media site is "struggling to find stable footing,"and it's not the only one that thinks this is the case. Web analytic firm Chitka referred to the flailing membership numbers as a "Failure to Launch."
"Reportedly, Google+ saw a surge in traffic of over 1200 percent due to the additional publicity, but the increased user base was only temporary, as was projected in an earlier insights post," Chitka said. "The data shows that, on the day of its public debut, Google+ traffic skyrocketed to peak levels. But, soon after, traffic fell by over 60 percent as it returned to its normal, underwhelming state. It would appear that although high levels of publicity were able to draw new traffic to Google+, few of them saw reason to stay."
Are you concerned that so many people ditched Google+ after it went live, or encouraged by the large numbers who decided to stay?
Comments are closed on this article
__me
October 12, 2011 at 5:31pm
"Are you concerned that so many people ditched Google+ after it went live" could you be any more pro-google? I bet it never even occured to you that some people avoid google at all costs for google's total disregard of users' privacy! google's social network? seriously? no thank you!
Raswan
October 11, 2011 at 8:01pm
Anyone gonna hypothesize that the lack of interest in g+ is really an increasing amount of fatigue with social networking sites in general? For cripe's sake, it would take me all of 10 minutes to make my g+ profile look exactly like my fb one. But I just couldn't give a sh*t. What this suggests to me is that my fb use is something other than what fb tries to convince me it is, and is in danger of being replaced in a heartbeat by something, anything, that merges that facet of my online life (however significant it is) with other services I use regularly, and spend actual time on. Give me a customizable online portal that merges my rss feeds (with a couple pictures instead of just plain old text) from MaxPC, Techspot, Wired, and PCmag, with my Discover subscription, my school email and/or gmail, Steam, and some friends, pictures and videos, and fb goes bye-bye. Google was on the right track a little, I think, with circles, subscribe, pictures, and whatever else they added. They get that your social network should be more than just that. Make sense at all?
What I'm saying is that fb is a hollow platform of the past, not of the future. Everyone gets blinded by the figures. Sure, 750 million users is impressive. But except as an occasional invite and an "update" service--which in reality I only care about insofar as it provides interesting things to read/watch, and immediately nix friends who post retarded, inane nonsense--fb provides nothing to me. Just a thought.
Mortal_M
October 11, 2011 at 10:45am
I think the problem with Google+ is that if people whant to switch (or join up) they need/want all their friends to be there, and if their friends don't want to switc or are thinking the same and are waiting for the other friends to jump in before they do, then it's going to be a little hard for Google+ to grow.
Not a lot to do with this but I just wanted to put it out there :D
aarcane
October 11, 2011 at 10:42am
I see google+ as a tool to allow us, as a society, to ditch the failings of Facebook. Unfortunately, every time google+ adds a new feature, within a week, facebook is adding it too, or one similar, and most people are content to accept the status quo despite it's many failings.
It's a repeat of the Myspace-imitating-Facebook fiasco, and it didn't work for my Myspace. The important thing now is that we follow procedures. we need to quit posting interresting posts on facebook, and instead post them on our google+, message all our friends and ask them nicely to switch for us, (Give them instructions on how to sign up instead of links so they don't think it's spam), and e-mail anyone with a share button and have them add google+ buttons as well.
Speaking of google+ buttons, MaximumPC, will you please add google+ buttons so we can share your content, and will you provide a link to the maximumpc google+ page, so we can add it to our "following" or "Fave magaiznes" circles ?
