Study Says Google+ Is a Ghost Town

The war for dominance in the social media space will never really be won. Even with Facebook and Twitter dominating the scene at the moment, there’s always going to be other players looking to draw eyeballs and attention to their networks and platforms.

One such player in this war is search giant Google, whose Google+ social network debuted towards the end of last year. Sadly, even with some impressive user numbers, over 100 Million at last count, a new study suggests that “social activity and user engagement” on the service is far from good. In fact, it’s downright terrible.

Over at Fast Company, the findings of an RJ Metrics study that analyzed data from a sample of 40,000 public Google+ accounts in an effort to determine just how successful the social network is was revealed. The reports main conclusion? Google+ is a ghost town.

According to the report, the average post on Google+ gets fewer than one “+1,” the equivalent of a “like” on Facebook, and fewer than one reply. Links and other items shared publicly by Google+ users are re-shared just 0.17 times per post, on average. In addition, users averaged about one post every 12 days, usage per user declines each month after they make their first public post and about 30% of users who make a first public post never make another one.

As a daily user of Google+ (here’s my profile) I find this report interesting. On the surface it paints a pretty grim picture of Google+ and its user base. However, it only takes into account public post on the service, something I almost never make.

In fact, a vast majority of my post are made and shared only with people in my circles and not with the public. Most of the post I read from people in my circles are the same. They rarely, at least in my experience, post something publicly.

So, not taking those kinds of post into account seems to make the results of this report rather suspect. Still, its a bit disturbing to read things like this and I hope it doesn’t paint an accurate picture of Google+. I like it and I plan on continuing to use it, even over other services like Facebook.

Let’s hope it hangs around for quite some time.