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back to article Google+ dying on its arse – shock new poll

Google has bet the company on Google+, but it’s dying on its arse. A study by traffic analysts RJ Metrics suggests that public engagement with the social network is weak, and failing to gather momentum. "The decay rate here is very concerning," says the report, summarised here. "Users are less and less likely to make …

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  1. Rob Davis

    Give it time. Facebook going for 8 years. G+ underpins other services.

    Facebook has been going for 8 years.

    G+ is a relative newcomer which is its disadvantage competing against the established.

    People's tastes will change too which may work in the favour of G+

    G+ shouldn't be directly compared to Facebook. G+ binds lots of services good in their own right together (Gmail, Youtube, Blogger), providing convenience of sign on and sharing.

    Too much focus on G+ itself when it is more a underpinning fabric for these services.

    A Facebook weakness I can see is being too time-oriented: it's not easy for example to see all the things you Like as a list, there is no notion of favourites or categorised tagging.

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    1. Stuart Castle Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Give it time. Facebook going for 8 years. G+ underpins other services.

      Facebook may have been going for 8 years, but it quickly overtook the already established Myspace..

      In the meantime, a lot of people I know that started using G+ have gone back to facebook.

      You argue that G+ binds a lot of services together for a single sign on. Yes, they are bound together. As they were before G+ was conceived. Bound by a single Google ID.

      I agree, it's too early to count G+ out, but so far, G+ is following the same pattern Wave did. Launched with a lot of hype. A lot of people registering claiming it's a bold new way of sharing documents. Then, usage declined as people realised they could do everything they needed without sending their information to an outside company. Eventually, Google pulled the plug. Google have shown no signs they are doing that with G+, but Wave only lasted a couple of years before they did it. G+ is already a year old, and apparently has a declining membership.

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  2. Eguro
    Alert

    People don't like obvious force

    I think the main reason why Google+ is in trouble (but also the main reason it ever got started), is the way they coerced gmail users and others into having a +-profile.

    Obvious coercion is not a good idea in these matters - just ask Facebook.

    In the past FB have changed their general design - spawning outrage and numerous "We demand the old facebook back"

    They've learned from those mistakes. Any new feature is presented not as force, but as an option. "Switch to the new X - it's a whole new experience"

    When enough people have voluntarily switched, they can then slowly prepare the rest for forced switching.

    Instead of making the new thing a forced thing, you make it hip and smart and have people switch on their own accord.

    It might be translateable into G+, but I hope not.

    I don't trust Google as far as I can throw them - and my server-farm throwing skills are quite low.

    Granted Facebook does the same thing, but Google has way more tentacles with which to wring out the remaining info about me.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not doing that badly...

    ...after all, I only use 3 minutes a month less of Google+ compared to 405 minutes less of Facebook.

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  4. bailey86

    G Plus is a slow burner but much better than FB

    I don't bother checking FB - it's really just a list of inane drivel.

    On the other hand, G+ posts are interesting because I choose to follow people who make interesting posts about subjects which interest me.

    And the circles option is brilliant. I can post up a picture of lit'lun messily eating a chocolate biscuit to only my family circle - cos it's only of interest to the grandparents and aunties. It means I don't have to inflict the picture to a mass of people who aren't interested.

    The final point is that G+ enables me to share posts/pics etc to people when I only have their email address. For example, I act as the unofficial camp photographer for camping trips involving about twelve families. All I need is to collect their email addresses to be able to share all the photos with them.

    FB is too blunt a tool.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Here, I'll explain it...

    Google+ was recommended to me by a friend. So I clicked on it and set-up a G+ account. Before I knew what happened, it had put up a public webpage with every photo or image I had posted to my various (separate) blogs. So all the various blog topics (some slightly sensitive) were suddently linked to my real world identity via the images. If I were a political dissident in certain countries, this would have revealed my true identity and (in the worst case) I would have been taken out and shot. Complete and utter privacy FAIL with potentially life-changing consequences.

    Google+ is one of the worst experiences that I've ever had on the Interweb.

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  6. Allonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Any suggestions for how Google can disentangle itself from Plus?

    Nuke it from orbit. Only way to be sure.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well, duh, tell me something I did not already know.....

    Hah hah hah, loving all the Google fanbois (i.e most of the reg commentards) spluttering about how Google+ is just misunderstood and the figures are wrong and everyone uses it and and and….

    The reality is that it is SHITE. It is an utter, utter fail, along with most of the rest of Google’s ‘projects’ (outside of search).

    This is the beginning of the end for Google. They have one profitable business (search) that is starting to get seriously slayed by Bing (30% share in the US I believe now). Their Android ‘business’ is doing great for Samsung, but, umm, not so good for Google.

    I do not know anyone that still uses G+. It is dead. And I am pleased. Most people have now twigged that Google is an evil, predatory company that is only interested in selling their users data to the highest bidder. About bloody time too.

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    1. Stuart Castle Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Well, duh, tell me something I did not already know.....

      One thing Google needs to bear in mind. Samsung, while apparently throwing their full weight behind Android, is also actively supporting Windows Phone.

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  8. Greg 16

    How much is each Facebook user worth? $100+?

    The only way to break the Social Network monopoly now, is to pay people. $10 for joining and $2.50 for each invite that joins would soon bump up their numbers and once that kick starts the numbers it would naturally snowball from there. They could even use it to popularise Google checkout, and use that as a validation technique for people joining the network.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's all due to ad-blocking

    Perhaps Google+ can't get past all the ad(d)-blocking that's going on in browsers

    :-)

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's all due to ad-blocking

      Blimey - it wasn't the best gag in the word but did it deserve a thumbs down? Apparently yes. :-)

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  10. Armando 123

    Wait a second

    How does this affect C-level celebrities? Because that's what "news" is all about these days.

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  11. Gulfie
    FAIL

    You can't compare Google+ to Facebook

    Facebook is a bit like reading a tabloid newspaper - full of gossip, tacky pictures and fluff. It is designed to keep you on their property, consuming their content and playing their games, and then coming back for more. They want to to spend as much time as possible on the site and had designed it as such.

    Google+ on the other hand is something akin to an editorially independent broadsheet with a wide breadth and depth of information available and linked. It is designed to allow people to add, link to and discuss the things that interest them. In doing so Google gain two things - information about your interests (to use when targeting adverts) and human validation of information on the web (a huge mechanical turk, if you like) that they can use as another input to their search engine algorithms. Look at a stream of posts in Google+ and you see lots of links to content, almost all of which is not inside Google+ or even hosted by Google. It isn't designed to keep people 'on the premises' on purpose - so a Facebook comparison will always fail no matter how successful Google think they have been.

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  12. sisk

    It's a shame

    Google+ has some really great features. The hangout could stand on its own and make the whole

    Thing worthwhile if only there were ever anyone on it to hangout with. Like I said when Google started this experiment, they need to convince people to leave Facebook if they're going to be successful. They've failed to do so, despite having several features that should make it a healthy competitor to Facebook.

    Sadly I think they're stuck with it at this point. It's going nowhere in both directions. I don't think it's likely to drag them under though.

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  13. Jess

    Perhaps they should allow you to manage facebook etc from G+

    If they could hook into facebook and treat it as a circle and do the same for myspace, and do something similar for twitter, they would have a chance.

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  14. awesomeface

    i know why google+ never took off

    The reason I don't use g+ is probably the same others aren't.

    I DONT WANT TO GIVE A SOCIAL NETWORK MY FSCKING CELL PHONE NUMBER!!! WHO THE FSCK THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?

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  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    i use google +

    i am a fringe lunatic with no friends

    chronic masturbatory behavior

    and general shit disturber

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Are you paid by Facebook and the MPAA and its goons?

    It's fair to say I'm not a fan of your posts!

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Once again hah hah hah

    A couple of people have raised the point that circles and hangouts are good G+ features. That may be true. However, what is more likley I wonder:

    a) Lots of Facebook users will 'find out' about the new G+ features, make a decision to leave Facebook because of them, and move across to G+

    b) Facebook will quietly implement similar features and maintain its dominace over the pathetic me too product that is G+

    Hmmm, I wonder......

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  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How many solutions to google problems could google solve by googling?

    I think Google are starting to get their business model wrong.

    Ignoring Google+ (and the excellent Google Earth) for a moment:

    Google search seems to think it knows better what i'm searching for than I do

    Google search seems to think I can't spell

    Google search no longer seems to perform boolean

    Google have a service called Google Checkout, this generates revenue for Google.

    Google haven't updated the osCommerce Google Checkout payment module to make it compatible with the 2.3.1 version of osCommerce, even though it has been out for quite a long time now, several people are bothering to search for a solution, Google Search doesn't reveal such a solution (from what I have seen) and yet osCommerce has a sizeable market share, and so they are losing payment custom to competitors such as paypal.

    Linked with the Google Checkout issue, if you have an ecommerce site and don't have Google Checkout as a payment option, your Google Search rating may suffer!

    Google have a social network site, that is anti-social, and anti-networking.

    Google is my default webpage, my mobile runs Android, and i still tend to search with google first, but i'm sorry google, you simply cannot currently compete with facebook.

    Let's face it, most facebook issues can be resolved by spending additional time configuring privacy options on a per-post basis, creating private groups of friends in which to have marginally more private conversations, not adding too many people you barely know, telling those you do know that if they ever add you to groups without permissions YOU WILL remove them from your facebook friends list, and by using advert blocking utilities.

    Google+ on the other hand?

    - it's issue is called facebook.

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  19. Seb123

    And in other news...

    "Half of Americans Predict that Facebook is just a Fad"

    http://www.tomsguide.com/us/facebook-poll-ipo,news-15219.html

    At the end of the day, who cares?

    Use the social things or don't use them. It's up to you.

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  20. This Side Up
    FAIL

    Google is pissing me off

    for not just monitoring search requests but indirecting all the results as well. I's quicker to copy the address than click on the link. Google is its own worst enemy. If you've got something that works LEAVE IT ALONE!

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