Google+ has been struggling to build on its early success, ‘losing millions of visitors’ the week after it was introduced, according to new data.
By Emma Barnett, Digital Media Editor
The network, which Google hopes will rival Facebook, launched in June this
year to a limited group of users and then fully opened up to the public in
September.
New figures from web data company Experian Hitwise show that despite a huge
spike in visitors once Google+ went live, going from a million unique users
to 15 million in one week, the site’s popularity has not lasted.
More than half of the new 14 million users did not return to use the site
during the following week and since September, Google+ has lost nearly half
of the visitors who initially came to the site.
The Los Angeles Times got
access to the new figures from Experian Hitwise, which also show
that the site has made some modest gains in the last couple of weeks, with
traffic rising by 1.5 million visitors, (an approximate 30 per cent rise)
after Google+ opened
up to people using the suite of Google Apps and companies.
However, the figures are still just an indication at this stage as to how
popular Google+ has become. Experian’s figures do not yet include mobile
data, which will be a key way many users have accessed the new service. It
is also US focused data and counts visitors rather than the amount of people
who have created a Google+ account – which is believed to be north of 40
million. However, Google will not reveal how many of those accounts are
active.
A Google spokesman declined to comment on external research, but did say the
company had been "pleasantly surprised by the performance of the service".
Last week Nikesh Arora, Google’s chief business officer, said that Google+ was not a social network directly competing with Facebook.
Despite having been launched by Google as a new ‘social project’ just over 100 days ago, the senior Google executive said in response to a question from The Telegraph: “Google+, for us, is not a social network,” he stated.
“It is a platform which allows us to bring social elements into all the services and products that we offer. So you have seen YouTube come into Google+; you’ve seen Google+ with ‘direct connect’ go into our search business. We are trying to make sure we use social signals across all of our products... It’s not just about getting people together on one site and calling it a social network.”
Speaking at the Monaco Media Forum, Arora dodged a follow up question by The Telegraph about whether Google+ was a direct competitor to Facebook, saying:”I am sure there are some features on Google+ which compete with some features on Facebook.”
Google has been consistently struggling to compete against Facebook and create a successful social product that can compete effectively for people’s time and personal data on the internet.
As a result of this, prior to Google+’s launch in June 2011, Larry Page, in his first week of being
the company’s new chief executive in April 2011, prioritised the company’s social media strategy by making employees’ bonuses dependent upon the success of all social products.
Twenty-five per cent of all Google employees’ annual bonuses were then tied to the success or failure of Google's social strategy in 2011.
Arora also said that the underpinning of the modern web was going to be social rather than information-based.
And that because of this shift, users were going to have to provide more personal information about themselves and their preferences to internet companies if they were to take full advantage of socially-drive services.
“Clearly there is a fine line about this [how much information to share with web companies],” Arora said.
“There is a huge conversation around how much information... is OK to store with any one company and what should be out there on the web.”
“And that’s the choice we are going to have to make as consumers based around trust and convenience. [We can say] I trust you [a web company] to have this information about me because you are going to make it convenient for me to use a service and i don’t trust you to have other information.”
Last week Nikesh Arora, Google’s chief business officer, said that Google+ was not a social network directly competing with Facebook.
Despite having been launched by Google as a new ‘social project’ just over 100 days ago, the senior Google executive said in response to a question from The Telegraph: “Google+, for us, is not a social network,” he stated.
“It is a platform which allows us to bring social elements into all the services and products that we offer. So you have seen YouTube come into Google+; you’ve seen Google+ with ‘direct connect’ go into our search business. We are trying to make sure we use social signals across all of our products... It’s not just about getting people together on one site and calling it a social network.”
Speaking at the Monaco Media Forum, Arora dodged a follow up question by The Telegraph about whether Google+ was a direct competitor to Facebook, saying:”I am sure there are some features on Google+ which compete with some features on Facebook.”
Google has been consistently struggling to compete against Facebook and create a successful social product that can compete effectively for people’s time and personal data on the internet.
As a result of this, prior to Google+’s launch in June 2011, Larry Page, in his first week of being
the company’s new chief executive in April 2011, prioritised the company’s social media strategy by making employees’ bonuses dependent upon the success of all social products.
Twenty-five per cent of all Google employees’ annual bonuses were then tied to the success or failure of Google's social strategy in 2011.
Arora also said that the underpinning of the modern web was going to be social rather than information-based.
And that because of this shift, users were going to have to provide more personal information about themselves and their preferences to internet companies if they were to take full advantage of socially-drive services.
“Clearly there is a fine line about this [how much information to share with web companies],” Arora said.
“There is a huge conversation around how much information... is OK to store with any one company and what should be out there on the web.”
“And that’s the choice we are going to have to make as consumers based around trust and convenience. [We can say] I trust you [a web company] to have this information about me because you are going to make it convenient for me to use a service and i don’t trust you to have other information.”
