Despite its reputation, Google+ is anything but a ghost town — according to Google.
To back up this claim, the company has disclosed some figures about the new social network’s size and engagement levels. In a report released Tuesday, the New York Times revealed that 50 million people who have created a Google+ account actively use “Google Plus-enhanced products” each day. About 100 million Google+ members use them each month.
Vic Gundortra, Google’s vice president for engineering, told the paper that Google+ is the fastest-growing product in Google’s history.
What he didn’t mention is how much time users actually spend on Google+ each day. According to a Comscore report released last week, users spent an average of 3.3 minutes on Google+ in the month of January — compared to 7.5 hours on Facebook. Those numbers prompted the Wall Street Journal to call the network a “virtual ghost town.”
Google’s tally of activity on “Google Plus-enhanced products,” by contrast, suggests frequent activity on the network by at least 50 million people. But it includes activity on YouTube, the Android Marketplace and the Google search engine. Even if you don’t have Google+, you probably spend a significant amount of time on these sites.
In The Times article, Google defends its statistic by saying time spent on Google+ isn’t reflective of how much the network is being used. Gundotra described the social network as “a social blanket that envelopes the entire Google experience.”
In other words, Google+ users are using Google+ when they’re logged into their profiles while on YouTube or Google Search.
Do you buy the logic? Can shared social features across products constitute a social network? Let us know in the comments.
Images courtesy of iStockphoto, Maravic
Source: Mashable
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