More Time Spent on MySpace Than Google+, Says Report
A recent report claims that Google+ users spend just over three minutes a month on the site.
Is Google a virtual ghost town? That's what the Wall Street Journal describes after spouting the latest numbers provided by comScore Inc. The new data shows that visitors using personal computers are signing up with Google's social network, but only averaged 3.3 minutes per month between September 2011 and January 2012. By comparison, users spent five to six hours on Facebook each month during the same timeframe.
However Reuters points out that prominent social media companies typically fall short of Facebook's triumphs anyway when using the minutes-per-month measurement. Yet these competitors still keep their visitors lurking longer than three minutes. Even MySpace, which has 27 million fewer visitors than Google+, manages to keep its guests entertained long enough for them to spend almost three times as much time per month.
A Google spokesperson said it's difficult for any third party research firm to monitor or measure the performance of Google+, as it's more than a mere destination site. "Google thinks about the service not as a site but as a deepening of its relationship to billions of existing users who are already committed to Google's services like Search, YouTube, Android, etc," the spokesperson said. "By this measure, engagement is already enormous."
To Google's defense, the comScore report merely focused on visitors using personal computers, and didn't consider mobile coverage. Yet that may have looked even more negatively on Google's numbers, as Facebook has a large and active audience on the mobile platform. Both Facebook and Google+ offers apps for Android and Apple's iOS as well as HTML5-based web apps loaded in mobile browsers.
The problem Google+ clearly faces is that consumers may not want to build their contact lists from scratch all over again on another network. And while Google+ does offer some unique features like Circles and Hangout, analysts and consumers alike claim the distinction just isn't enough to lure them away from Facebook.
"Nobody wants another social network right now," said Brian Solis, an analyst at social-media advisory firm Altimeter Group, when speaking with the WSJ. He added that for those who already use Facebook, Google really hasn't communicated what the value of Google+ is, why it's better.
Sure, Google has spent money on its own advertising, reaching out through magazines, newspapers and TV, but it may not be enough. Google may need to throw some punches and explain why Google+ is better than its rival. Until then, Google's social boat may have a hard time finding passengers despite the entertainment on-board.
Even social game developer Zynga, which offers CityVille and Zynga Poker on Google+, said it noticed the slow growth without revealing the actual numbers. "So far, Google+ is a nice platform but it's been slow on the uptick with users right now," said John Schappert, Zynga's chief operating officer.
Other Google partners have expressed their concern about the growth, reporting less-than-hoped results.
"[The company's Google+ account is] not as great as we were hoping it was going to be," admits Ekaterina Walter, who manages Intel's presence on social media sites. 360,000 Google+ members have signed up to receive updates from the chip maker, whereas the company has nine million "fans" on Facebook.
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This is kind of sad.
No really? Google+ is a very new social website comparing to dinosaur myspace and cavemen facebook. I wonder how much this reporter is gettin paid? LOL
Sounds like people are signing up and leaving to me.
Google + circles are very cooler than anything else
Google + circles are very cooler than anything else
Yeah, that's what all my Google+ friends say but in fact no one wants to preach to some "circles"... I much prefer reaching my friends than some random people.
Google just needs to mantain a small loyal customer base at first. When people start having the stupid "everyone else is at Google+" thinking, BOOM! Profit.
All in all, I find Google+ quite interesting with the circles system. The trouble is that, once you sign up for Google+, your Picasa (and other Google services) don't look and behave the same anymore. Pictures sharing can then only been done with Google+ contacts (or with everyone on the internet... no way !) and for the contacts, not possible anymore to download a whole album to their Picasa, and so on. I killed the G+ thing to restore all the lost functionalities.
Plus, everyone I know is on Facebook, you have to be a geek or IT related to even know what G+ is (which is not the case of Facebook), I can't bring them all to G+ and kill my facebook account so like many people, I stick to Facebook because I don't want to spend my time maintaining my profiles in 10 different social networks... I think that may persons enrolled in G+ were just gmail or picasa users who clicked yes on an invitation but never ever gave it a look, which explains the skyroketting amount of users and the lack of time spent on it...
G+ has better conversations than Facebook. Instead of [insert emo post about loneliness or how tired you are], I can find [insert post about the latest robots built in Japan].
A person can't keep updating multiple social network accounts. A dedicated facebook user will have no time left for a life let alone another internet persona.
I agree with all those saying that with the slow-to-non-existant adoption of G+ with friends/family it makes it difficult to make it an "everyday player" IMO. I ditched FB years ago when it became bloated and crap for security/privacy. IMO G+ is much better but with hardly any friends/family...what's the point?
I log in to G+ maybe once a month, see that there's been one post from my friends in all that time, shake my head and go back to FB.
Everyone that I know of that has tried out Google+ has stopped using after a couple of weeks. Most people have become quite established within Facebook and really don't want to start all over again with Google+.
MySpace is still around?
My friends all signed up for Google+ and never have gone back to visit. Meanwhile, they spend an hour or so on Facebook each day.
Google+, like many of their products, were just a temporary trend that people felt excited about getting an invite to.
I think Google+ does a lot of things much better than Facebook does. The problem is that you can't have small groups of people switch. Then they'd be by themselves without any of their Facebook friends. You have to get large groups of people to switch together.
The real news here is... people still use MySpace?!
I'm wondering if their numbers only include people on computers. I love G+ but I never access it from my computer. I use my phone. It's always on my phone. Does that mean I'm not part of their demographic? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one that uses G+ this way.
All in all, I find Google+ quite interesting with the circles system. The trouble is that, once you sign up for Google+, your Picasa (and other Google services) don't look and behave the same anymore. Pictures sharing can then only been done with Google+ contacts (or with everyone on the internet... no way !) and for the contacts, not possible anymore to download a whole album to their Picasa, and so on. I killed the G+ thing to restore all the lost functionalities.
You can still access your album via picasaweb.google.com with all the old options. I agree though that Google has been dropping the ball not updating G+ to perfectly mirror Picasaweb's functionality. I used Picasaweb as my "preview" of G+ photo sharing before I signed up. I was disappointed to find that most of the features on Picasaweb are not on G+. Then I found that I could still use those features via Picasaweb (e.g. change the sort order of an album) and the changes would be reflected in G+. It's still very clumsy though when they could just implement the same features in G+.
Well I only use Google+ (no Facebook) and I'd say that maybe 1 out of every 20 people I know has an account compared to about 18 out of 20 on Facebook. And of those people on Google+, only about 1/4 actually uses it. Its really sad because it is so much better than Facebook.
MySpace.com/video is the #6 Video site overall, as of Feb 2012:
http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/video-websites
According to CommScore, more time is spent on MySpace than Google+:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10 [...] 42390.html
MySpace is still in the top 10 Social networking sites, beating out Google+, according to Nielsen:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwir [...] 1-digital/
(Scroll down to the chart were MySpace is mentioned.)
A recent survey of Internet Privacy issues showed MySpace still used by a healthy one-third of those in the study:
http://blog.usamp.com/blog/2012/01 [...] a-privacy/
MySpace is #16 on Seomoz:
http://www.seomoz.org/top500
And is in the Top 7 trending brands on Twitter:
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012 [...] fographic/
Google lists MySpace as #61 out of the Top 1000 sites worldwide, with over 45 Million unique visitors and over 1 Billion page views! It's still ahead of Tumblr & HuffPo. Surprisingly, Reddit is nowhere in sight:
http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/
Just looking at that list and counting Social networking sites, MySpace comes in at number 5.
And it's still beating out Tumblr, Pinterest & Google+ according to CommScore:
http://www.techradar.com/news/inte [...] ommentform
A month later, it's STILL beating out Google+!
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook [...] ogle-/9601
MySpace TV is also mentioned positively in these articles:
http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/18/ [...] -for-2012/
http://www.v-net.tv/myspace-unveil [...] reen-sync/
CNET has reported that “MySpace has got it's groove back!”
http://news.cnet.com/1606-2_3-50120010.html
I find that so far, Google + is way more comparable to Twitter then FB.
The prob is the initial require to invite only pretty much killed the "race to G+" madness.
Everyone was wanted to join G+, but it is limited to invite only. wtf., then u miss all the function the FB has. I blame only Google alone for launching G+ without full functionality of FB.