Google+ growing quickly

In case you missed the headlines, Google+ is now the second biggest social network according to a recent study by GlobalWebIndex. As the story says, the network’s growth appears to be at the expense not of Facebook or other established players but instead comes from smaller, niche or even regional networks.

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As usual social network is a function of a few different things: First, there’s inertia, where current users continue to do so simply because they are at this time and that’s where they feel, for whatever reason, comfortable. So new people are added on top of that. Second, there’s the lure of following friends. So we either continue to use or are attracted to some network because of the promise that that’s where we will find friends and other familiar faces.

A separate GWI study shows Twitter to be the fastest growing social network worldwide as measured by active users. But it also shows that activity on Twitter is changing to be much more passive than it used to be, and at a faster pace as well. According to the research almost half the people who visit the site regularly are just reading and taking some sort of more passive action instead of posting something original.

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One thought on “Google+ growing quickly

  1. At least the twitter users are reading stuff on twitter. As much as I like me some Google Plus, people rarely (if ever) visit Google Plus. The numbers that Google Plus has the second most numbers are really bloated, frankly, kinda silly.

    I’d love to see people use Google Plus more, but people just don’t go to the site. And yeah, the results show up in google searches. But I don’t quite count that. Even though it’s really important to have personal results show up in your google searches from people you know. But I’d say it’s more important to have some sort of engagement directly on Google Plus, even if it’s just simple reading.

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