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Comment by sulam | Hacker News Reader

I have trouble believing that G+ outstrips Twitter when it comes to social sharing. I think there is likely something at play other than that which isn't captured by this analysis. For instance, Twitter doesn't auto load articles the way G+ and FB do, so perhaps there is a distinction to be made there. At any rate, if G+ was this successful, I think we can all agree Google wouldn't have killed / pivoted it, which means the data is suspect in some way.

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Another thing to consider is that social sharing via those buttons just doesn't seem to be "a thing" on Twitter. I'm a heavy (probably excessive) Twitter user, and I interact with a lot of other heavy users, and I almost never see tweets generated by those buttons. IME, when people on Twitter share links it's usually by copy-pasting the URL, and when those Share buttons are used, it's usually by bots or the, er, less technically literate. It's just not part of the culture.

Honestly those numbers are most likely almost entirely automated bots. G+ is popular with content mills to get their page ranking up. Think about it for a moment, do you know ANYONE at all that uses G+ for anything?

I use it. It's a nice place to follow news organizations and argue with complete strangers in the comment sections of the articles they post. Discussions seem to be less quarrelsome, YMMV. The communities are nice for following hobbyist interests. I don't use it at all for following friends or family.

It's very popular in particular niches. No serious Ingress player isn't active on G+, for instance.

It appears to me that G+ has found a different niche than Facebook. Facebook is for seeing posts from people you know (mostly people you know but don't see often or at all, like college friends or your aunt). G+ is for seeing posts from people you share interests with. Yes, FB has groups and pages for that kind of thing, but it just seems to have clicked better on G+.

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