Yes, but I know dozens of people on LinkedIn. I know one active Google+ user and he's a bit of a Google fanboy to begin with.
None of the non-techie people I know use Google+ or even mention it at all.
None of the non-techie people I know use Google+ or even mention it at all.
Maybe the bunch of google+ audience just happen to not be part of your social circle. Personally, I'd love to see some g+ usage statistics divided by demographics to confirm this hypothesis. (specially since the author explicits these numbers are from US only, not sure if that's right)
edit: G+ also seem to be extremely popular on very specific niches other than technology. Such as photograph and science. In fact, g+ developers make a big deal about their product being developed from and to photographers. You'll notice their mobile app focuses the whole experience on large beautiful photos because of it. Every day there's a different photographer-focused hashtag trending (today it's #TreeTuesday).
So yea, anecdotes, bad.
Another explanation is that it's impossible to sign up for any google product (like gmail) w/o getting herded into google plus.
There's been a lot made of FB (and other social networks) primarily being photo-sharing networks. While I doubt video will ever quite have the same impact (they're deeper but not as casually shared), it probably will grow as a social element, and Google are beautifully positioned in this regard.
So I fail to see what Google+ brings to the table other than an inbuilt video chat client which has been done so many times over the last decade.
Technology, even once widely available, can take a while to take off.
Google have been doing a TON of PR in Japan. They're doing a collaboration[0] with Japan's top J-Pop group (AKB48, with 200+ members) where they gave them all high-end Samsung phones and G+ accounts to post on. Some popular members used to post on Twitter and Ameblo, but this has extended to all members. They've also done exclusive G+ live streams of concerts, and when the group had their yearly popularity contest, Google+ had a live stream with live +1 buttons that graphed the mood over time[1].
I imagine they've also been recruiting other celebrities in Japan to drive adoption.
Hangouts are really the only reason I've ever seen a non-techie use G+, and they work really well. People seem to try Skype and then realize that there are weird rules about having to pay if you want group video chat, so people hop over to G+ and it just works.
And the news thing seems really interesting to me because it seems to highlight provocative things said by public personalities and then lets everyone with a Google account join the discussion as 'part of Google plus'. That seems like something that could get pretty sticky.
I can't say I've seen a lot of G+ pages as organic results, but they do seem to feel free to inject links to social media profiles when they're related in some way to a search result.
A comparable example is Apple's Ping. Apple doesn't tout Ping as a success because it has millions of members (who were similarly presented with a trivial sign up method in iTunes 10 - Ping registered over 1M users in the first 48 hours.) Ping, however, is rarely used by the bulk of it's members, as such it's being discontinued. Most people signed up just to see what it was like, they didn't stick around. Facebook/LinkedIn don't have this problem so much, most people already know what the services are for, so they don't need to create a profile just to see what it's like.
G+ is growing, but it's an overstatement to say that it has the same level of user engagement as facebook/LinkedIn/others.
While many continue with the faulty logic that G+ is a superior experience/platform so it should become the dominant service, need to revisit the learnings of Betamax: technical superiority does not equate to automatic or guaranteed success.
Why is there the need to respond to data with anecdotes? If I give a Google+ growth anecdote, does that invalidate yours?
I have no idea why Google+ is being compared to LinkedIn. They have very little overlap. Even among Facebook and Google+ the overlap is limited.
Nonetheless Google keeps iterating on the product and it seems to be paying off. The Android Google+ client is now superb, and the content richness seems to be greatly improving, particularly in the tech field. Which is important because the tech field is what generally leads the growth curve.
Why, haven't you heard? The plural of anecdote is data! :-)
Not much at all because it says nothing of intent, much less duration of stay on that page or frequency of use.
In the absence of that additional data, anecdotes can be useful to express doubt or confusion about data that seems to not pass the sniff-test. It can be as minimal as "is it just me, or does ... ?" sort of constructions or it can be more formalized to say – "This doesn't fit with my personal observations".
The mistake is thinking that anecdotes add up to data – they don't – but put enough of them together and they can be heuristically valuable – and one on its own, in the absence of other real data, is still a completely valid construct for conversational purposes or to challenge (albeit weakly) some over-cooked claim, like what I'm seeing here, with the google+ traffic data. The refutation of such an anecdotal experience with sound evidence doesn't mean the the anecdote was worthless – hardly. It was valuable because it was provocative.
Anecdote: Wrong.
incongruity: Two wrongs make a right!
I would adapt that and say that all anecdotes are wrong, but some are useful.
"Why is there the need to respond to data with anecdotes?"
I feel as though I made my case pretty well for a generalized reason, above. In this particular case, as I said:
"The key here is that the number reported is "unique visitors" – what, exactly, is this telling us? Not much at all because it says nothing of intent, much less duration of stay on that page or frequency of use.
I think there's much ado about little data. So, in the face of not all that informative of data, I think a weak bit of anecdotal pushback is wonderful if it gets conversation started.
I mean... if there's much ado about little data, why is it that MORE ado is better?
But, more fully, anecdotes aren't speculation. They're individual experience. They are not, of course, a statistically representative sample. That doesn't mean it's worthless – it's just not authoritative, but it is still some person's real experience (internet truthiness aside). The all-or nothing view of validity and knowledge is problematic – and likely not reflective of how you or anyone else actually deals with reasoning.
Beyond that if it sparked discussion that either spurred the uncovering of real data or identified the requirement of further considerations, it's still of value.
Which it didn't. We're not going to get better data until Google releases it, and Google is clearly not going to be doing so.
> But, more fully, anecdotes aren't speculation.
This claim would be okay if the anecdote was offered in a neutral environment. Here, however, it's being offered as contradictory evidence. The speculation isn't in the anecdote: it's in the purpose of offering the anecdote in the first place.
The anecdote was about the same as a TIOBE survey result coming out and responding with, "Oh, but I know a lot of Haskell programmers and don't know any Python programmers." That's wonderful for you and all, but your experience is seriously not relevant, nor does it prompt useful discussion or the discovery of useful data.
I agree that anecdotes can be useful. That's half the purpose of journalism: finding anecdotes.
I disagree that they are useful here.
Which it didn't. We're not going to get better data until Google releases it, and Google is clearly not going to be doing so.
It most certainly did spark discussion – I'd point out, somewhat ironically that you've been involved in one of them yourself – but there were a number of other replies. Some of which (mine included) addressed the data issue head-on.
> But, more fully, anecdotes aren't speculation. This claim would be okay if the anecdote was offered in a neutral environment.
There is no such thing as a neutral environment, so your premise fails from the start.
And, no, hits to a web page or unique visitor counts are not tantamount to real usage figures for a social media site. So the analogy to a TIOBE survey breaks down as well.
I disagree that they are useful here.
Well...
I said, explicitly that I was addressing the larger point of the other poster asking "Why is there the need to respond to data with anecdotes?" I started directly by pointing out the failing of "data" in this case – I find it to be an over-played trope to always say "anecdote BAD!" and yet people fall all over themselves if someone puts a shitty graph or table up, not stoping to consider what the "data" means and what possible failings it might have.
And that led me directly to the value of anecdotes in general terms – something you now say you agree with, so we'll call that point made.
Given that we agree about the general value, I think it's clear that in the face of crappy, blindly accepted data, a mere (and admittedly weak) piece of anecdotal observation does, in fact, point out that the emperor has no clothes – the data pointed to here is very, very lacking. The anecdote was weak, but sufficient for what should have been an obvious task of poking holes in questionable data.
Instead, you prove my point by digging in your heels even more because someone tossed out an anecdote.
No it doesn't.
You only have to look at Digg and Reddit to see that just because you have tech users does not mean you will see widespread growth outside that demographic.
And sites like Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram even Facebook grew because of non tech users.
LinkedIn was dominated by the tech field. Specifically the valley tech field. That was what gave it the network effect.