Company News · June 29, 2012

The State of Google+, One Year In

By Tom Webster

I will admit to not being a huge user of Google+, but I am a user. I bet that is true for many of you, as well. This week marks the one-year anniversary of Google’s social platform, and there have been varying assessments of its success and/or failure. In our recent update to The Social Habit research series, we showed some figures on the current adoption of Google+, and I found them eye-opening. Here is how the usage of Google+ ranks among some other popular social platforms with Americans 12+:

 

 

So, as of early 2012 (when this study was fielded,) 8% of Americans 12+ (well over 20 million people) had ever used Google+.  That puts it just a bit smaller than Twitter (10%) and LinkedIn (13%) in terms of penetration, which I would argue is a solid debut. In fact, just to put that 8% into context, here is the growth of Twitter over the past five years, as tracked by our Edison/Arbitron Internet and Multimedia Research Series of Americans 12+:

2008: <1%

2009: 2%

2010: 7%

2011: 8%

2012: 10%

It took Twitter at least 4 years to get to 8%; Google+ did it in a few months. And here’s the thing about usage: Google+ isn’t like most social networks in that they don’t require you to “use” the service everyday to get your eyeballs. That isn’t really the game. Once you signed up for Google+, you pretty much did all Google needed you to do–tie your demographic/profile information to your search activities. Once you did that, it really doesn’t matter how much or little you use the service–your profile data is being factored and figured into every Google search you do, and your search results are influencing–and being influenced by–your friends.

To invoke the name of a sub-premium line of Day Care facilities I once wanted to introduce, that’s “a pretty good start.”

How much do you use Google+–and how much do you think it influences what you see and share online?

 

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