Have you joined Google+ yet? I have chosen to ignore the invitations clogging my inbox because I feel my social networking quota is already met. Currently, I am active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare. One more social network may just overload me and I don’t think I’m the only one fatigued by the thought of filling out another profile and having to manage another account so I can keep up with my “friends.”
A recent article in mobiledia emphasizes that while people are signing up for Google+, they are not remaining active and are averaging only five minutes per site visit. In fact, Dreamgrow has calculated that “Google+ share in Google.com’s total traffic has dropped 37 percent in the last 18 days” as of August 31.
There could be a number of explanations for this in my opinion:
- On Google+ you have to use your existing Gmail account
- The platform is still in beta
- Businesses are being asked not to sign up yet
- It is mostly a regurgitation of posts and photos from my friends which already exist on Facebook and Twitter
- Its features aren’t much different than Facebook or Twitter
In the end, Google+ is one more login to remember, one more website to check and one more app for my iPhone. I am not against the emergence of new social networks, but just ask that they bring something new to the table, such as Spotify for music enthusiasts.
What do you think? Leave your comments here.
As a consumer, I believe that competition between products ultimately makes for a better product/service for the end user – lower prices, more features, etc. But in this case, Google+ isn’t fulfilling any social networking void for me – only making me realize how cluttered with social networking “tasks” my daily online activity already is.
no more space…in brain…for other…social site…
I agree that the number of platforms we have for both business/personal is quickly becoming unmanageable. But I have to say, and I’m sure this has been mentioned before, that the circle function in Google+ is something that I will use (one my family shows up there). It’s really nice to be able to quickly restrict what I share and view by a relationship I’ve defined.
It’ll be interesting to see this tool evolve. Thanks for the post!
Thanks for this. My thoughts exactly.