“Google Inc.’s social network debuted at the top spot on a customer-service index of social-media websites, including Facebook Inc., which sank to a record low in the annual report,” Brian Womack reports for Bloomberg. “Google+, which was started in June 2011, tied information aggregator Wikipedia with a score of 78 in the social-media category on the American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business Report, which ranks companies on a 100-point scale. Facebook, criticized for changes to its interface, had a score of 61, down from 66 last year and 64 in the 2010 report.”
Womack reports, “Already owner of the world’s largest search engine, Google is counting on Google+ to help it challenge Facebook for user attention and to provide more data to improve its core web-query service. Google+ already has reached more than 250 million users, compared with more than 900 million for Facebook… As a category, social media slipped 1.4 percent in the customer-satisfaction index to 69, the ACSI said.”
“Twitter Inc., the microblogging service that has more than 140 million users, was a new entry to the category with a score of 64,” Womack reports. “Professional-networking site LinkedIn Corp. had a score of 63, and Pinterest Inc., an image-based social site, fared better at 69. Both were also new entries to the category.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: First of all, total “user” numbers do not equal active users. Google+ has 150 million active users.
Secondly, iOS 6 with Facebook integration rapidly deployed to hundreds of millions of iOS devices isn’t going to help Google+ to become relevant. iOS 5 with Twitter integration more than doubled Twitter signups and increased the number of Tweets by over 90 percent! Imagine what Google+ integration into iOS could have done for Google’s service.
Yes, that’s right, if they aren’t already, “Google’s going to rue the day they got greedy by deciding to try to work against Apple instead of with them.” – MacDailyNews Take, March 09, 2010
Related articles:
Could Google+ ever have been anything but a failure? – March 27, 2012
A eulogy for Google+ – August 15, 2011
Apple’s Facebook integration in iOS 6 is a boon to developers – June 18, 2012
Apple friends Facebook at WWDC, hits Google where it hurts – June 12, 2012
Apple shows off iOS 6 with all new Maps, Siri features, Facebook integration, Shared Photo Streams via iCloud, and more – June 11, 2012
Related articles:
Twitter unveils sweeping redesign; says iOS integration has boosted signups by 25% – December 9, 2011
Weird. Last I heard reporting on Google+, it was that it had turned into an abandoned wasteland after a promising start.
——RM
It is, this is BS.
That WOULD be a problem…if it was like Facebook. G+ functions as a crossover between Facebook and Twitter, so it has the additonal public discussion dimension, which makes it interesting enough to use over Facebook, which is Iimited to just walls. I find that G+ users have more interesting things to talk about than my Facebook friends.
Ahhhh, the paradox of a popular ghost town!
In other news, the article mentions that those surveyed expressed “privacy concerns” about Facebook. But, hey, no such worries with Google !!!
+1
I’d say Google+ would be popular with those who love country life and live miles away from the nearest neighbor…
…if I didn’t live in rural Oklahoma. Here, without a doubt, Facebook is king and Google is for searches.
Google is highly optimized site. Facebook can join any one and it is not working on security issue.
Only one of my friends is on Google+ that I know of for sure. He was telling me about the “circles” or something…
He works for Google.
It sounds like these circles are more like dots.
I tried Twitter but I just don’t get it… I’m a young guy, 24, the twittering age, but I just can’t get into it. I like Facebook for the events and photo sharing with mates but Twitter just seems like status updates, which are boring anyway… Am I missing something? I wish I liked it cause of all the integration happening but I don’t see it lasting (opinion based merely on the fact I don’t like it haha) Google …. Meh.
Google Plus is thundering right now.
Google+ is fun, engaging, fast, with vastly more interesting people. You go into Google+ and you create circles which are essentially groups of people you follow. If you follow people in technology, you can create a circle there, people in physics, you can create a circle for that. If you are one of those people with friends and family, you can create a circle for those people etc. You can watch a stream of posts from all circles or selected circles.
Generally Google+ has attracted very smart people. FaceBook has been left to all the morons posting “Hang In There Kitty” meme posters. FaceBook is a billion meme posters a minute. Google+ people are actually interacting and discussing things.
I go to FaceBook, people are putting up pictures of the the chicken livers they cooked for dinner last night. And there are all these stupid ads all over the place. And the iPad app is constantly hanging up, and you have to watch your privacy settings… etc. etc.
Google+ people are discussing higgs boson, airships as transportation as opposed to multibillion dollar bullet train tax sinkholes that will never see the light of day.
And the Google+ apps for iPad and iPhone are gorgeous. The FaceBook App is a piece of crap generally speaking, and much worse in comparison.
I’m sorry, but as people begin to get out of the drunken, drugged, snooze fest that is Facebook and Discover Google+, FaceBook will quickly fail. There’s no imagination in FaceBook, no good programmers, nothing. It’s surviving because it’s where your aunt Tilly hangs out and she doesn’t want to learn another system.
Google+ has it’s share of Aunt Tillys as well, and there is the occasional meme poster, but if you like engaging intelligent people and thinking, it’s leaps and bounds over FaceBook.
There is a highly Apple Hostile contingent rooted into Google+ and if you can handle putting them in their place from time to time (which I know most of you can), even that side of things can be fun.
Apple picked the dead horse in this race.
I agree that Farcebook appears to have jumped the shark. Have no real opinion of Google+ as it’s not something I see much need for. The fact that it’s connected to Google alone would make me leery.
It takes some effort to figure out what you really want from Google+, find the type of people you want to “follow”, figure what type of information you want to contribute and share. But it ends up becoming your social network.
Your network doesn’t change because of the whim of Facbook’s unscrupulous engineers, or what memes your most witless acquaintance wants to repost.
Like you said, you can follow smart people, and hear about higgs bosons and high speed trains. I’m sure someone else can set it up so that they only see celebrity gossip and cat photos, if they are into those kind of things. It’s what you make of it, and has a lot of potential for awesomeness.
That sounds like a bunch of morons. Sorry but if I want to be around Apple hating geek retards I’ll go to Ars Technica or even Slashdot.
No thanks.
I agree entirely. Every point is right on. I’ll add that the G app for iPhone can instantly upload your full resolution iPhone photos to a private album google photos (Picasso)… Essentially a free, effortless way to backup photos from your phone. 5GB of free storage.
It’s a much better experience. Better than watching the myspaceifcation of Facebook!
Quite honestly if you are a prime example of the type of people that populate G+ then I’d rather stay in my “drunken snoozefest”.
What sort of nasty, vindictive, judgmental person would insult and belittle 900 million people because of the social network they are on??
You should be ashamed.
MDN speaks as if Facebook is somehow a more admirable company than Google!?! Well, they’re both equally shittastic! Looking forward to 5 years from now when they’re irrelevant. (OK, maybe 10 for Google)
Google+ is a solid social networking website, in my opinion. For one thing, privacy settings are simple and easy to use – it never pressures or tricks you into sharing everything with everyone the way Facebook tends to. People you know are put into custom groups called “Circles”, such as family or coworkers, which are completely customizable, and everything you share is limited to the Circles you specify.
Some people forget that social network websites take time to grow. Facebook didn’t reach 900 million users overnight – it was phased deployment over many years, one college at a time, then high schools, and finally the general public. In time the Google+ user base will grow – because it is evidently satisfying their users, and many want an alternative to Facebook.
I prefer Google+ myself, cleaner and more engaging. Facebook feels “old” by contrast. Too bad none of my friends actually actively use Google+.
http://www.idontdsocialize.com
http://www.idontsocialize.com
I like Google+ I’d like to see MDN have a presence there. I know that’s asking quite a bit, but I believe it’s a strong platform for social networking. FaceBook is kinda Stodgy, kinda Tim Cook-ish. (running ducking hiding).
G+ has all of FaceBook’s strengths and none of its weaknesses. The rush of Twitter and the comprehensiveness of blogs.
You need users to be a social platform. Lacking that google is not a social network. Facebook is not perfect, but it has users.
You can have as smart people on your Facebook as you want, too. Just meet some smart people and add them.
“Just meet some smart people…”
G+ is a convention with lots of interesting people walking around meeting each other. Facebook is a slab of blue concrete that hoards of people are congregating around, most of them always on the other side of the wall from you though.
Some people have been trying to push Google+ from the beginning. I was incredibly underwhelmed, and don’t see the attraction of Pinterest, either. Enough is enough. I’m on FB- everyone I know is.
I like Google
Interesting thing to note is that Andy Hertzfield was one of the key designers of the circles interface.
Has this thread attracted a bunch of people with a vested interest in promoting Google+? I’m sure a few names actively promote the use of android, too. There are many, many people I have links to on Fb, and Twitter too. I know of only one person out of hundred who signed up to G+, and dropped it within a day or two, because the only presence was a few tumbleweed blowing through the empty spaces. Twitter is in use extensively by the BBC, for example, as a way for listeners to contact radio presenters and DJ’s quickly and easily, and for those presenters to post quick updates on programme features and updates for musicians and bands, who also use Twitter and Fb for promotion, as Soundcloud is platform agnostic, unlike MySpace, which STILL insists on using Flash.
Go up to anyone in the street here in the UK and ask them if they’re on G+, probably 90+% would look blankly at you. Fb, on the other hand, would get you well over 60-70%.
Everyone I know uses Fb.
I have yet to receive ONE SINGLE request to be ‘friends’ (or whatever it is) on G- from anybody, business associates, customers (I run my own business) family members.
Only one person even mentioned G- to me last year. They opened an account and left it because nobody there was doing anything.
Google is pushing G- hard and people may well be signing up but it’s a big illusion. I’m not buying it and I’m NOT signing up to let Google invade my privacy anymore than they already do.
I’d rather be on Pinterest.
I know Googles numbers are bogus because they opened a Google account for me just because I have a rarely useful old gmail account. I never singed up for Google !
Google account ≠ Google Plus account. You have to explicitly activate that yourself.
“Google nabs top spot in customer satisfaction survey”. I guess the three guys who use it gave it decent reviews.