Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2013. Google shut down the consumer version of Google+ in April 2019, so the article’s prediction that it could overtake Facebook did not come true. The GlobalWebIndex figure of 353 million active users dates from early 2013 and was disputed at the time.
Comments like “Google+ is dead,” “Google’s social network is a desert” or “lots of users and very little activity” are common among social media users. And the truth is that until now Google+ had been, by a huge margin, the social network sending the least traffic to our site, even behind LinkedIn, so I had come to share that feeling that there wasn’t much going on there.
Then yesterday, as it happens, it became very clear to me that if I were Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), I’d adjust my rear-view mirror very carefully, because Google+ has its turn signal on and is seriously intending to overtake. According to GlobalWebIndex, Google+ already has more active users than Twitter (353 million), making it the second most used social network in the world.
Yesterday we published an article about a businessman fighting planned obsolescence, and we witnessed a head-to-head between the two social media giants (Facebook and Google+). In less than 5 hours the article received more than 12,000 visits. Once the traffic storm had passed, we saw that 7,200 of those visits came from Google+, while Facebook sent 3,200 and Twitter 850. Striking numbers, considering we have more followers on Facebook and Twitter than on Google+.
As I write this, the article has just over 15,000 visits, and the trickle of traffic that keeps coming in is still mostly from Google+. So Google’s social network is very much alive, even if catching the attention or sparking the interest of its users may not be as easy as on other networks. Salva Castro, one of its users, may have had a point when he said that we should tell the difference between “Google+ is dead” and “nobody cares about your posts.”
Clearly, when something does go viral on Google+, the effect can be much more powerful than on the number-one social network, especially after the changes Facebook made recently, where you now have to pay if you want to reach 100% of your own fans.
Featured image: U.S. Department of State, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
