Just a datapoint, but out of all the invitations I sent out when G+ first launched (100-150, I don't recall), 40 or 50 friends signed up. ~3 of them still use it at least once a week.<p>From my observations, G+ still seems to consist primarily of three major user groups:<p><pre><code> 1. Tech celebrities
2. Technologists in general
3. Non-US users
</code></pre>
Facebook's feature set is killer, but at some point, I really would like to use some social software that doesn't silently launch a blinking GPS signal when I'm reading my news feed (I know, I can disable it, but still...).
Scanning through the comments here, in the media, and lots of tech blogs, google+ is taking a bit of a battering. Everyone seems to be hating on it.<p>Sure, it's quite likely it will never "beat" facebook, but what happened to: <a href="http://xkcd.com/918/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/918/</a><p>I'm still very happy there is an alternative. I don't care if people think two social networks is one too many. Competition is good.<p>Facebook = { All the people I know (pretty much) }<p>Google+ = { All the people I care about what they have to say }<p>I think google+ will always have a place, regardless of whether it crushes fbook in terms of active users or not.
How do they define 'user', for Google+? Facebook's metric is 'active users' which I believe are people who have visited the site during the past 30 days.<p>If Google+'s definition of 'user' is simply someone who has registered for a Google+ profile, then they are overcounting enormously.<p>My feeling is that they are indeed disingenuously overcounting, in the same way they do with Android, where they talk about the number of 'activations' rather than device sales.
"Cash – As of September 30, 2011, cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities were $42.6 billion."<p>During this quarter, Google made $302 million on interest alone. That's an impressive 11% of this quarter's net profit. I wonder what they plan to do with all that money.
An interesting meta data point here is that out of the short few sentences they chose to quote from larry page, more than 50% of it was about Google+. Even though it generates no revenue and has a tiny user base compared to the rest of Google's products.<p>Which is to say, whatever you think about Google+ it is undeniable that they see it as a huge strategic priority.
I know I need to just be patient and wait for Apps users to get Profiles/Plus, but I don't find it particularly sympathetic of Google when they keep saying that "everyone" can use Google+ now, even in their financial results announcements. From the CEO.<p>(Yes, technically anyone can use it by signing up with a free @gmail.com account, but I consider that a cop out.)
I don't think Google+ will ever be a Facebook killer (Is Bing a Google killer?). Google's strengths are search and advertising, but not social networking. Given that Google+ is integrated to many google products, its not going to die soon IMHO, but it will be just there for sometime (Yahoo/excite never closed after google success).<p>Contrary example is gmail which caused a dent in Yahoo mail and still gaining momentum. But gmail was re-inventing email access (gtalk integration), but Google+ is no way close to revolutionizing social networking.
Something like 20 million of their users are in India, a lot of those look like Orkut (Google) converts (edit: maybe notsomuch, add FB and look at last few years).<p><a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=google%20plus%2Corkut&geo=IN&date=6%2F2011%205m&cmpt=q" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=google%20plus%2Cork...</a>
Their naming /branding scheme is not good. Google + sounds like an API extension or a bad programming language. Sometimes it's better to give a product a human face...beginning with a name that communicates what it is.