Google, one of the most important tech companies of this decade, has gone into the social space for the third time.
Countless opinions are circulating about the product, whether it’s fascination with a feature or thoughts on their corporate strategy.
Common press outlets are echoing the same message:
Will the tech giant destroy the Facebook Empire!?
Who knows. In truth, there’s no way to really know the viability of the product with such limited information about its performance. Yet it continues to stir up article after article for each little feature adjustment.
Rather than bore you with another glorious review of Circles, or a discussion on how Google+ added billions to their market value, let’s dig up the stats that matter.
The founder, Larry Page, announced very positive results: 10 million users in two weeks. But, what should they be tracking here? More relevant metrics would be active users, average time spent on platform, or Zuckerberg’s recent focus on “sharing frequency per user”.
Google didn’t need to put big dollars into marketing Google+. They have a built-in user base of millions, eliminating the friction of a registration process (this explains the 10 million captured users). Their focus was giving Google users a compelling reason to join the service (group videochat? Yes!) and driving great results with goals they knew could be achieved.
Unfortunately, they aren’t focusing on per-user metrics. Why should I share things here instead of Facebook or Twitter? I need to build ANOTHER profile? In designing Google+, they haven’t shown users a compelling reason to stay.
For us, it’s no surprise that Google+ is suffering from a user retention issue only four weeks after launch. The news came out recently from Bloomberg:
“Total Google+ visits fell about 3 percent to 1.79 million in the U.S. in the week ended July 23 from the prior seven days, said New York-based Experian Hitwise, which tracks Web traffic. Google+ had risen 283 percent in the week ended July 16. The average time spent on the site in the most recent week declined 10 percent to 5 minutes and 15 seconds, the research firm found.”
We feel Google’s innovative approach to the social space is worth the controversy. It’s interesting to learn how one of the most important companies of the decade looks to change our lives even further. However, at the end of the day, maybe people don’t like to categorize their friends?
Up next: Google+ for businesses on the next rollout. Many businesses have already tried to use Google+, only to have their profiles wiped out. Keep a look out for our critiques once the service finally ships.