“Relatively glacial”? as in Twitter taking 1,800 days to reach 100 million users, Facebook taking 1,665 days, and G+ achieving that number in 240 days? (And this was long before Youtube integration.) I think we forget how long FB in particular has been around, and how gradual its growth was.
Unfortunately, you’re parroting Google’s public relations talking points in regards to massively oversimplified comparative growth. And, like Google’s public relations, you are leaving out the major factor of time periods when you compare these growth statistics.
It was a very different time period when Facebook started about a decade ago in 2004. The iPhone wasn’t even released until 5 years later. The iPad tablet was even later. Android even later. On the other hand, around the time Google+ started there was already an explosion of smartphones, tablets and phablets on the market that pulled many more social users onto the web that weren’t there before.
Same goes for Twitter which was started about 8 years ago versus Google+ getting started a mere few years ago. You’re also ignoring that Google+ started after Facebook and Twitter began to reach their saturation points and who’d also paved a road for other social apps to follow.
Once you take out the Google public relations spin while properly factoring into the equation the disparate time periods of growth, saturation and how Google rammed people into its services, one gets a much more realistic picture of Google+'s true, glacial growth compared to Facebook, Twitter, etc.
The fact is that G+ has been life-changing for me. I teach meditation, and G+ has been the first social media site where I’ve been able to generate any kind of community of people interested in and influenced by my work.
Your anecdotal experience sounds good, but it’s not very compelling without more information. Had you tried other options and they failed? If so, which options did you try and how and why did they fail?
That’s truly great that it’s worked out for you and I mean this sincerely. But the other fact is that there’s plenty of other online venues with very successful, tight-knit communities that have nothing or little to do with Google+ or Facebook to attribute to their success.
it’s changed my life in substantial ways, allowing me to teach and write full time, which I’ve never been able to do before.
I posit it it may not have been Google+ that changed your life, but perhaps your efforts to reach out to others online that changed your life. Maybe you should pat your own back instead of Google’s?
I also hope for your sake that Google+ isn’t yet another passing fancy for Google to abandon. Google has quite an extensive graveyard in this regard including some very coveted offerings.
But, then again, that’s going to be the risk you take when your business, community, etc. is tied to the will of a giant oligopoly/monoply with much more money than it has ethics, loyalty for its user base, etc.
I’m glad we can agree since that’s all I’m saying. Reporters can repeat “ghost town ghost town ghost town” ad nauseam, (which is much easier than actually thinking, analyzing data, or otherwise doing real reporting)
Well, as I showed you above, if one does actual thinking and proper analysis, the Google+ growth compared to Facebook and Twitter is blown wildly out of proportion by the media that all too often parrots Google’s public relations drivel.
If you look at a lot of the reporting on Google+ growth, you’ll see an overwhelming amount that unfairly compares the growth to Facebook and Twitter without factoring in the vital externalities I mentioned.
And, this is coming from someone who (mostly) despises Facebook, BTW.