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darrenm

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I still know literally no-one who is on Google +

Or rather, I know a few people who are signed up, but no-one who is registered but actually uses it, ever.

G+ isn't really for communicating with people you know (though it's amazingly good at that).

It's for finding people with whom you have common interests and forming communities based on that.

Around half of the people in my circles are people I didn't know existed pre-G+.

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At the moment my main use of Google Plus is as a free online photo backup. My phone automatically uploads pictures to a private gallery whenever I am on a WiFi network, and as the vast majority of my pictures are of my kids growing up I'd hate to lose them and the extra backup is a nice thing to have.

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I suspect that Google+ has suffered both from turning up after the horse has bolted and also providing a niche take on the social network thing that not many people really care about.

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I still know literally no-one who is on Google +

Or rather, I know a few people who are signed up, but no-one who is registered but actually uses it, ever.

G+ isn't really for communicating with people you know (though it's amazingly good at that).

It's for finding people with whom you have common interests and forming communities based on that.

Around half of the people in my circles are people I didn't know existed pre-G+.

Oh.

I think I'll pass.

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leviramsey wrote:

Stevo985 wrote:

I still know literally no-one who is on Google +

Or rather, I know a few people who are signed up, but no-one who is registered but actually uses it, ever.

G+ isn't really for communicating with people you know (though it's amazingly good at that).

It's for finding people with whom you have common interests and forming communities based on that.

Around half of the people in my circles are people I didn't know existed pre-G+.

Oh.

I think I'll pass.

And your posting this on villatalk, where, er, you knew virtually no one before you registered?

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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

CSI.jpg

American Customer Satisfaction Index"]

Facebook, already the lowest-scoring e-business company, suffers the largest decline in customer satisfaction according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report released today in partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee. The social media juggernaut plunges 8% to 61 on a 100-point scale, setting a new record-low score for the Social Media category and placing it among the five lowest-scoring companies of more than 230 measured by the ACSI.

As Facebook falls, cross-town rival Google+ does well with a score of 78 in its first appearance in the ACSI. According to the report, Google+’s strong showing is a result of an absence of traditional advertising and what is seen as a superior mobile product. Google+’s strengths may be Facebook’s weaknesses, as users complain about ads and privacy concerns. However, the most frequent complaints about Facebook are changes to its user interface, most recently the introduction of the Timeline feature.

“Facebook and Google+ are competing on two critical fronts: customer experience and market penetration. Google+ handily wins the former, and Facebook handily wins the latter, for now,” said Larry Freed, President and CEO of ForeSee. “It’s worth asking how much customer satisfaction matters for Facebook, given its unrivaled 800 million user base. But I expect Google to leverage its multiple properties and mobile capabilities to attract users at a rapid pace. If Facebook doesn’t feel the pressure to improve customer satisfaction now, that may soon change.”

The e-business sector overall drops 1.6% from a year ago to a score of 74.2, lower than the national ACSI score of 75.9.

“E-business websites used to be higher in customer satisfaction than most other categories covered by the ACSI, but their performance over the past three years suggests that they need to respond better to the changing needs and expectations of their customers,” said Claes Fornell, ACSI Chairman and author of The Satisfied Customer. “Our research shows that customer satisfaction is critical for financial performance, as long as consumers have choice and repeat business is important.”

G+ will be bigger than Facebook and Twitter within two years. I'm beyond convinced of that, and while part of G+'s appeal is it's elite userbase, the filtering tools are so far and away ahead of Facebook and Twitter that a surge of numpties probably won't affect it. They get mobile right. They get work/life separation right. They now get tablet UI right (I've seen a number of dormant users saying that the new iPad version of the app is the reason they're becoming active again).

And if you're going to [re]start on G+, Jaana Nystrom has probably the best intro guide I've seen:

The simplest way I can describe the difference between Facebook and Google Plus is that while Facebook helps you to keep in touch with the people you already know, Google+ helps you to get in touch with the people you want to know. Don’t be shy or afraid to circle as many people as possible, you can always uncircle later if they’re not up to your expectations. Sharing your interests and passions are another great point for Google+: It’s easy to find like minded folks with the aid of the G+ search using keywords or hashtags.

On Google+ you can follow anyone without them having to follow you back and without sending them any invite that they’d need to approve, which is a lot like Twitter. However, unlike Twitter you can also choose exactly who sees what, making G+ the only social network where you can have one account while still easily separate business posting from personal.

Why would I log in to Facebook?

To see what my friends and relatives have been up to, especially my twin nieces who live in Cyprus and play beach volleyball: Oh, one of them has just gotten engaged to the long-time boyfriend! To check whose birthday it is or what the weather is like at my sister’s place, can she let the horses out today or is it too cold. I also like to check the upcoming events which are still missing from the Google Plus (at the time I was writing this).

Facebook feels comfortable, we’re surrounded by like-minded people and know our way around.

With the changes Facebook has lately made, it has brought the platform closer to the idea of Google+. Take subscriptions, for instance, they remind me of Circles: You can follow celebrities or even acquaintances without the need for friend requests or possible rejection.

Of course these two copy and steal from one another, but that’s just good for us end users.

What about Google+, why would I create a new social media account?

For the newcomers to Google+ the place might look like a desert. Your stream is empty, your friends haven’t joined in, the whole place feels strange and even its UI is a bit baffling. Where to start?

My favorite quote is from Johnathan Chung:

To make good use of Google+, you should follow the five C’s:

Circle, Comment, Contribute, Curate and… Circle.

Please finish your profile, make it a first priority.

When you add me to your Circles I always try to check who you are, to see if you're worth circling back. Without public posts and a good 'Information' text on your profile it's very difficult to determine what your likes are...

The same if I find you commenting on someone else's post: Make your profile image striking for attracting the attention, if that's what you'd like, that is.

Posts, profile, photo... If there is nothing showing, I'll not even think of circling you back, sorry.

Search Google+ for your favorite authors, artists, celebrities, sports stars. Search for your preferred hobby or anything you are interested in, then circle those who say things that grab your attention. Check who they have circled or who has circled them. Select abundantly and soon you’ll find yourself splashing in streams of thoughts, tips and news about the very things that interest you. Search for #hashtags and save the search for later easy use.

Google+ works already well together with many Google tools: The latest addition or Events is a much-awaited feature for organizing the big happenings or Hangouts On Air and links your Google Calendar with the events you want to participate in.

The Facebook status box asks “What is on your mind?” Google+ not only makes it easy to answer but also makes it even easier for others to find out what you have to say. After all, Google is a specialist in search.

Give Google+ a try and don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s just another Facebook clone. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A world that is full of interesting subjects and phenomena, where you can have meaningful discussions with folks from around the globe, Hangout with friends or interesting G+ celebrities / strangers, where you learn something new every day and where it’s easy to strike up acquaintances - or even become friends - with the most unlikely people.

I call Google+ “my ever changing window to the world” for a good reason.

(as to why Google didn't just make this the guide to sell G+ with at launch, well, I think it's simply that Google didn't know what they had. G+ is a set of orthogonal tools within a sufficiently generalized framework that allows nearly any social media model to be implemented within G+ (the only major one I can think of that's difficult is the "discussion board" model, because of the 500 comment to a post limitation). G+ is what the users want it to be, what they make of it)

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100% agreed with Levi as per the above. I've recently become so involved with Google+ again I've completely forgotten about Facebook and Twitter.

It just works better in every way.

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I'd be far from convinced G+ will overtake FB and Twitter inside 2 years. That's a very bold claim.

G+ is already (one year from launch) half as big as Twitter and about a third as big as Facebook: 250m vs. 500m vs. 800m (and I've seen research indicating that it's signing up under-20 users faster than FB (largely through kids having Gmail and Android: if you're an Android user who has a Gmail account and you don't yet have any social networking accounts, G+ is a whole lot less hassle than Twitter or FB)).

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I've just logged into G+ for the first time in about a year, and it's improved so much. Really liking it! Though, i'm really not sure they will get anywhere near the amount of people on FB to join.

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I'd be far from convinced G+ will overtake FB and Twitter inside 2 years. That's a very bold claim.

G+ is already (one year from launch) half as big as Twitter and about a third as big as Facebook: 250m vs. 500m vs. 800m (and I've seen research indicating that it's signing up under-20 users faster than FB (largely through kids having Gmail and Android: if you're an Android user who has a Gmail account and you don't yet have any social networking accounts, G+ is a whole lot less hassle than Twitter or FB)).

Bump this thread in two years. See who wins. A website's popularity can explode or implode almost overnight though, just look at what happened to Digg.

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The key is critical mass. You can have Google+ steadily getting more and more popular for the next year and then suddenly the scale tips, where people realise their friends and family are actually all on there, but it's actually easier to use and more powerful than Facebook. Plus it links in very heavily with their phone and tablet. From one day to the next you'll suddenly see Google+ become absolutely massive.

Incidentally, Google+ can also be a lot of other things other than just a social network. My photographer friend says the Flickr community are moving away from Flickr and onto Google+ because it's so much better to work with. I was thinking earlier that you could run this forum on there and make it more effective (sorry Simon).

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Interestingly enough, the forum model is probably the one social media model that G+ doesn't support well, thanks to the limit of 500 comments on a post.

I'm working quasi-part-time on a candidate for VillaTalk 2.0 (and yes, it's in Perl, since I've fallen in love with the Catalyst framework (not so much with DBIx::Class, but hey...)).

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Is Facebook toast?

It’s been an "septimana horribilis" (horrible week) for social networking giant Facebook.

First, Facebook got its keister handed to it by Google+in a customer satisfaction survey. Then another report showed that Facebook is bleeding users.

This isn’t the end of the world for Facebook. There’s still hope for the company. But a radical shift is needed now to stop Facebook from declining into irrelevancy.

What happened this week?

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released a reportyesterday that contained devastating news for Facebook. The social network, which was already at the bottom of last year’s survey, fell an incredible 8%, scoring just 61 points on a 100-point scale.

Not only was Facebook the lowest-scoring social network by far, it was among the five lowest scoring companies in all categories measured by the ASCI.

It gets worse: Facebook’s most direct competitor, Google+, topped the survey, coming in at number-one with a score of 78 -- a position it shares only with the beloved Wikipedia site. (This is Google+’s first appearance on the annual survey.)

(Pinterest, Linkedin and Twittercame in with 69, 63 and 64 points, respectively.)

At least Facebook has still got their subscriber numbers, right? Well, that’s the other bad news.

Capstone analyst Rory Maher reportedthis week that his proprietary software, which tracks Facebook user numbers, says Facebook is bleeding users.

For example, he says, Facebook’s user base dropped by 1.1 percent in the US. Of the other major countries in which Facebook has a lot of users, a few are growing slowly, others are declining and many are holding steady.

Long story short: It appears that Facebook’s incredible user growth has plateaued, and this while other networks like Google+ and Pinterest are growing rapidly.

The Social Ash Heap of History

Social sites have been around long enough for us to know that even the strongest winners can crash and burn quickly.

Facebook itself once played the role of the tiny upstart that didn’t have a prayer against Mighty MySpace. Look at the two networks now. It’s clear that MySpace’s fall is closely linked to Facebook’s rise as a preferable alternative.

And last week, we learned that the one-time darling of the social world, the social bookmarking site Digg, would be sold for scrap-- a pathetic end to a once successful site.

Digg was valued at $160 million back when that was an astronomical amount to be valued at, but its assets were sold off this week for less than one-tenth that amount.

Like MySpace, Digg was plagued by internal problems it just couldn’t resolve. And like MySpace, Digg’s fall was associated with a replacement by a superior rival -- in this case, by Reddit.

In fact, no major social network or social bookmarking site has been able to retain the lead in its category for more than a few years. So far, the “norm” has been that today’s social leader is always tomorrow’s loser.

That fact has to be factored in when pundits say Facebook will rule supreme always. In fact, staying number one is very unlikely for Facebook.

Facebook’s Big Problem

There’s a telling scene in the movie The Social Network in which the conversation turns to monetization. Facebook’s founding investor, Eduardo Saverin, wants to start making money on the site by the introduction of advertising. But the Zuckerberg character is against it, saying that ads will ruin what’s good about “TheFacebook.”

The fake Zuck said: “We don’t even know what it is yet. We don’t know what it is, we don’t know what it can be, we don’t know what it will be. We know that it’s cool, that is a priceless asset I’m not giving up.”

At some point, the real Facebook did give up being “cool,” and started selling advertising. But as investors made clear in Facebook’s recent IPO, the company isn’t selling enough advertising -- or making enough money.

Not to worry, said pundits. With all those users, Facebook can easily monetize.

And that’s the problem. Facebook can and will monetize. They must.

The reasons Facebook scores at rock-bottom in the ACSI user satisfaction survey are advertising and privacy.

Facebook has to monetize its social network, because right now the social network is the only asset Facebook has. Yet it’s monetization through advertising that makes users unsatisfied with Facebook.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s main rival, Google+, is still “cool” -- no advertising at all.

Even more threatening to Facebook is that Google may never have to put ads in Google+. Google can harvest social signals on Google+, then apply them to Google sites that already have advertising -- sites like Search, Gmail and YouTube.

Facebook and Google+ are characterized by an imbalance of “cool” -- Google’s got it, and Facebook doesn’t.

What Facebook Needs Now

Facebook finds itself in a catch-22. Facebook can minimize monetization and keep its users. Or the company can monetize and lose users -- thereby reducing its ability to monetize!

A third option is to monetize in a way that makes users happy. Good luck with that.

And yet a fourth option is the one I believe Facebook needs to embrace in order to survive: Facebook needs to gather user data internally, and monetize externally -- just like Google does.

One way to do this is with an external ad network, which Facebook has already started to do. Facebook should create an ad system whereby web sites could place advertising, which would be unique for each user based on social signals harvested on Facebook.

Another way is to do what Google did, but in reverse. While Google had a search engine, an email service, an office suite, a video site and more before getting into the social networking racket with Google+, Facebook could launch alternative sites like this as locations for its advertising.

None of these options are appealing or likely to succeed for Facebook.

But despite the echo chamber’s assumption that Facebook is sitting pretty with nothing to worry about, I believe Facebook is a dead man walking, and needs to radically change its entire business model to survive.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Facebook reports borderline disastrous numbers (fifth straight quarter of declining revenue growth) and now, more confirmation of a narrowing gap in Facebook vs. Google+ usage in the US

Traffic analytics site ComScore has revealed a large increase in visits to Google+. According to ComScore, the number of unique visitors to the social network has increased by 66 percent over the last nine months, with an estimated 110.7 million international visitors in June. In the US, traffic increased from 15.2 million to 27.7 million visitors over the same period. While the stats aren't official, they do align with figures released by other traffic analysts earlier this month.

ComScore also detailed Facebook's US figures from November through to June, noting a drop from 166 million to 159.8 million over the period. PR consultant Morten Myrstad, who shared the figures, appropriately, on Google+, points out that although Facebook's lead has dropped slightly, the unique visitor numbers don't take into account how long users spend on the site, or return visits.

3.6% net churn for Facebook in 6+ months.

No real strategy for mobile/tablet monetization.

No real strategy for expansion beyond social (which means that they're going to have to continue to play fast and loose with user's private information and/or clutter the pages with more ads... G+ is likely to remain ad-free forever, because Google is already using G+ to improve search results, AdWords targeting, Youtube, and most/all other revenue centers)

Facebook is thisclose to a Yahoo! style death spiral.

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Facebook...they're going to have to continue to play fast and loose with user's private information...
Unfortunately google is just as guilty of that kind of thing

Many people care not a jot, but for me if you provide details of your life, friends, family, activities etc, either willingly or more sinisterly, unwillingly, it is imperative that this information is handled legally and correctly.

Deliberately, illegally collecting data and not deleting data when ordered to do so by a court is not a good way to behave.

Google is facing a fresh privacy blunder after it admitted it had not deleted all of the private data, including emails and passwords, it secretly collected from internet users around the UK.

The search giant was ordered in December 2010 to delete the private information hoovered up by its Street View cars from open Wi-Fi networks.

On Friday, the ICO said the retention of the data appeared to be a breach of the undertaking signed by Google in December 2010.

A spokesman for the ICO said it would now conduct a forensic analysis of the data, meaning Google could be fined up to £500,000 if the material is found to be in breach of the Data Protection Act.

The company will be one of the first to have breached an undertaking by the ICO if the data is found to be in breach of the DPA.

The ICO said in a statement: "The ICO is clear that this information should never have been collected in the first place and the company's failure to secure its deletion as promised is cause for concern."

The technology company is already being investigated by the ICO over claims it orchestrated a cover-up of the data collection in 2010.

Google declined to say when it realised it had not deleted all of the data.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy at the pressure group Big Brother Watch, said Google should never have been ordered to erase the information in the first place.

"We now have an opportunity to explore just how sensitive the information was," he said.

"Given that Google failed to respect people's privacy in the first place and subsequently failed to adhere to its agreement with the information commissioner, serious questions need to be asked to understand why Google seemingly sees itself as above the law.

"The information commissioner is hampered by a woeful lack of powers and is forced to trust organisations to tell the truth. Given Google's behaviour has called into question if that really is a proper way to protect our personal data, it must be right to now demand a proper regulator with the powers and punishments to fully protect British people's privacy."

http://gu.com/p/39be5

As with all these big companies, there seems to be an element of "we can do what we want".

Avoid.

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Let's be honest here, and google+ is a social desert. Nobody uses it at all. I hate Facebook but everyone is on it and so I'll always be on it as a result. It'd be great if we could get everyone to move to Google+ but it ain't gonna happen. Ever.

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