Poll: Are you (still) using Google+
People are talking about the 'flop' of google+ because of the reduced number of public posts. Others counter that this is due to the fact that moost google+ activity is hidden from the public eye.
To resolve the question, here is a poll:
21 comments
[ 258 ms ] story [ 1422 ms ] threadIn fact, almost everyone in my circles is doing the same thing. So, I don't think calling it a flop does any justice.
Public post counts are not reliable measures, besides it's way too early to tell, ask again when it's visible to all users and integrated into all of Google's products and have the basic features of search and even "vanity" urls, not to mention removing the invite bottleneck.
It's Google's social play, something it must have, a list of people you know and interact with over Google products. It's a work in progress and will still unfold for some time.
And for the record if any other startup got the numbers they have it would be dubbed a huge success, it's just that people like to speculate about and judge everything Google as it gets them clicks.
Surprisingly enough the lower noise is putting people off! One of my friends commented that he missed 'mafia wars' and troubling random people (!) .
Wasn't it the same initially with orkut? Back then, especially in India and Brazil, people were skeptical about facebook.
Can you imagine that?
Seems like it's having trouble "jumping the chasm" from techies and early adopters to the masses, who are largely confused by the whole thing and don't see a need to jump from nice, comfortable Facebook where all their friends are.
Facebook hit it dead on (or got lucky) by being exclusively for college students first - get the college girls, you get the college boys, then their younger siblings want to be on as it's "cool" and their parents want to be on to stay in touch/keep an eye on the kids, then once the parents are on they help the grandparents get on.
Same with MySpace, which targeted bands - another cool demographic. Adults don't have time to be screwing around with social networks for the most part, but make them think their KIDS ARE IN DANGER and they'll log right on - then stick around and start finding it useful. If anything, the cable news hysteria over social networks might help rather than hinder adoption amongst older/non-technical people.
Google+, well, who wants to hang out with nerds? :)
I used to only use ICQ. I tried to avoid AIM, but then ended up joining to chat with a girl I was interested in. Turned out most of the non-tech/engineer world was also on AIM, and over time AIM won out as my chat client of choice.
So my suggestion to the Google+ team: find a way to get girls to join!
If I have something to share online, my goto service is still Twitter.