Google+, Google's year-old social network, is often criticized for being a ghost town, another failed attempt by the search giant to tap into the social web.
Not so, said Bradley Horowitz, Google+'s VP of product, at Business Insider's IGNITION conference on November 28, 2012.
Bradley Horowitz, VP of product for Google+
In addition to touting Google+'s user stats (400 million registered users as of September 30, 2012, including 100 million who visit the mobile app or website at least once a month), Horowitz took some time to slam Facebook's strategy of shoving ads in your news feed.
He used the metaphor of a guy with a sandwich board running in between an intimate conversation between a man and his daughter, an obvious allusion to the ads and promoted brands you see in your Facebook news feed.
Instead, Horowitz said it's much more useful (and less annoying) to users to show social recommendations instead of ads. For example, if you search for a product in Google –– say a microwave –– you can see which one your Google+ contacts recommend.
Horowitz said.
"It turns out recommendations are very valuable to users without compromising the user experience."
Horowitz added.
"Unlike Facebook, we don't have to make next week's payroll by jamming ads at users."
Watch the entire interview with Horowitz below:
COMMENTARY: Bradley sure slammed Facebook hard for running ads in user newsfeeds, but I wonder how long it will be until we begin seeing ads on Google+. His comment that Google didn't need those kind of ads in order to "make next week's payroll" was especially harsh.
Facebook began testing news feed ads back in January 2012. The ads are not very clearly marked and designed to blend in with a users other news feed content, they do come with some conditions.
- You’ll only ever see one of these per day.
- You will only ever see ads for pages that you have already "liked" meaning that random irrelevant content should never feature in your news feed.
In a blog post dated May 17, 2012, I commented on a study conducted by market research firm R.J. Metrics that painted a very poor picture of Google+ as having "waning interest, weak user engagement, and minimal social activity." Google called the study flawed and a spokesperson said.
"By only tracking engagement on public posts, this study is flawed and not an accurate representation of all the sharing and activity taking place on Google+. As we've said before, more sharing occurs privately to circles and individuals than publicly on Google+. The beauty of Google+ is that it allows you to share privately--you don't have to publicly share your thoughts, photos or videos with the world."
Although Google+ boasted that more than 170 million people had "upgraded" to the network at the time, RJ Metrics' report, on the other hand, claimed that it was another indicator that Google+ might indeed just be a "virtual ghost town," as some have argued.
According to digital research firm comScore, when it comes to social engagement, in spite of what Google says about Google+'s rapid growth numbers, when you look closer at the numbers you see a different story.
Social media trend data gathered between September 2011 and January 2012 showed Google+ users only spent an average of three minutes a month on the site – social engagement numbers that are staggeringly lower than other leading social networking sites:
- The average Facebook user spends about 7 hours a month on the site (yes, HOURS)
- The average Pinterest user spends about 1.5 hours a month on the site
- The average Tumblr user spends about 1.5 hours a month on the site
- The average Twitter user spends about 21 minutes a month on the site
- The average LinkedIn user spends about 17 minutes a month on the site
To put it even more into perspective, Google+ user social engagement was even outpaced by the rarely-mentioned Myspace, which average users visited for about eight minutes per month. The following infographic provides a visual comparison of the differences in engagement between Google+ and the other major social networks.
Click Image To Enlarge
Of course, Google defended its social platform, claiming the comScore data is ‘dramatically lower’ than their own internal data. However, there’s a pretty simple explanation for that. Google claimed in towards the end of 2011 that Google+ had 90 million users, 60% of which actively use the site daily. However, Google is going to great lengths to integrate the social network with its other products. So while that reported 60% may, in fact, be logging into Google on a daily basis, they are probably only doing so to use one of the other products, such as Google search, YouTube or Gmail.
In spite of the low number of users actually using Google+ to connect and engage with other users, its important to note that Google is capturing a lot of user data and keeping those users locked into the Google ecosystem by making it convenient for them to check their mail (Gmail), watch videos (YouTube) and play games (Google+ Games).
Google+ is obviously not winning the social network wars when it comes to shear numbers, but this begs the question: Who has the best social network? Stefani Epifani created this interesting infographic that provides some possible answers depending on your perspective:
Click Image To Enlarge
Courtesy of an article dated November 28, 2012 appearing in Business Insider
This so spoke to me – I constantly oscillate between creating/consuming and feel guilty when my reading pile or my google reader backs up to the point of overload…I feel better after reading your post here. I guess a lot of us are in the same boat…I like your guidance to set aside time EVERY day to create though
Posted by: Raaj Heran | 01/13/2013 at 11:57 PM