Google+ hit 20M users in three weeks smashing all targets and overloading their server capacity.
And here’s 6 reasons why.
1. Industry freaktards go wild!
Wow, 20M users in 2 weeks, amazing!?!?! Plus a recent study found that
50% of Facebook users want to move to Google+. Nice headline but the survey was run by tech publisher PC Mag, I’m pretty sure their audience is what you’d call ‘nerds’, I think that’s the scientific name for it. And that’s my first and main point, all this hubbub about Facebook’s demise is based on the premise that some freak-nerd-social-media-fanatic-did-i-say-nerd-o-philes love to play with new toys and predict the next big thing.Did you see what the crazy
‘head of social’ at Channel 7 went out proclaiming last week?
“To be honest, I’ve never really understood Facebook.” Adam Boland. C’mon that’d just plain stupid. (If you want more retard headline grabbing bold annoying claims read these “
11 predictions from Social Media Pros“.
UPDATE (14/9/11): In Australia Facebook is getting 718 times the number of visits as Google Plus
I got the data guys at Visual Jazz to look at high level trends in Australia using Hitwise and here’s the graph that shows a pretty grim picture for Google Plus.
Take a chill pill people, let’s see what the real humanoids think of it.
2. Each site play’s a role in your life
As one of the few readers of my fairly lame and rarely updated blog, you probably have a couple of social media accounts, maybe Twitter, or LinkedIn, some photo sharing or maybe a blog like Tumblr. They all play very different roles in each of our lives, I love Twitter for staying on top of what’s going on in work world, but Facebook is purely for friends. And LinkedIn, it’s basically my CV online. I know you’re thinking, “but Simon, they’ve got circles, it’s going to change the freakin world man” but maybe it’s just me being simple but I like to work and play separate.You currently use several social networks. The question is “What role can G+ play in your social nerdy world”
3. Hard yakka
Moving house is hard work and if you ask your friends to help out it’s almost more painful organising & feeding/bribing them. Imagine uprooting your entire social history, which is primarily people, messages & photos and starting a-fresh, c’mon seriously? To punters, Facebook isn’t a platform, software, technology thingo, it’s 328 friends and a record of the last 2 years of your public lives together.The carrot needs to be a lot greater than a circle, hangout and stuff.
4. Competition is good
Remember when Bing came out, while not many people predict the demise of Google, many said it would put a dent in Google’s growth. Well it hasn’t from all our data 91-97% of traffic from search is coming from Google, bing makes up a part of the other bits, and
Hitwise report Google getting 92.8% of all search traffic in Australia. But that’s not really related, sorry I’m a terrible blogger/writer, the point is Google has stepped it up every time Bing release a feature that Google believe to be getting traction. Which is great because Google is better now (the amount of updates since Bing’s launch is phenomenal), and the same rule applies to Facebook.This assumes that Facebook is a smart company, which we’ll have to assume as they have one of the biggest most visited sites in the world, and they’ve probably thought about Google making this kind of play. And if another person goes on about Circles and how much it’ll destroy Facebook I will punch them, in the face.
If Facebook can’t implement ONE feature (like circles) that’s going to be appealing to a mass audience, they’ve got bigger problems.
5. Who’s ur daddy?
But really, who’s G+ really competing with? I reckon it’s a greater threat to LinkedIn and Twitter than it is to Facebook. By default your profiles/feeds are public (and followable) like Twitter/LinkedIn and they’ve chucked in a big piece of content functionality called “Sparks” which reminds me of other sites like Tumblr, Digg, StumbleUpon, and more.To me it’s clear, G+ is a greater threat to Twitter and LinkedIn than it is to Facebook.
6. Facebook = smart!
They made the most popular site on the internet. That wasn’t an accident. </end>
Facebook is a super smart & strategic company, revolutionising the way technology fits into our lives, to assume they’re not able to compete with Google’s 3rd attempt at a social networking site is truly absurd. (I heard Buzz/Wave were going to be amazing when they launched)
I hope these points bring some kind of sanity to the current public debate about how G+ is going to solve global warming and dramatic demise of Facebook.
And if I’m being a completely hypocritical ass tell/punch me.
** I’m not saying G+ isn’t great and plays a role, but anybody predicting anything about what’s going to happen is lying.
4chan is the source of many of today’s internet memes (two you might have seen are Lolcats & Rick Rolling), only 6 years old the site gets 70m visitors per month, producing 700,000 posts per day. It’s a 
