[2^Oscar]

As in the title.

It looks like it's an improvement on other social network websites that I've used but, after it's been out for quite a while now, my homepage is still pretty bare.

Has anyone actually been using it or know someone who has? I've heard it's meant to be pretty good if you can get it going properly but I have no idea how to do this with so few people on it!

[Chief Wiggum]

Well, it's essentially pointless as everyone still uses Facebook.

[TooEasy123]

It looks pretty ugly and they've made it part of the YouTube account now.

[estel]

Have you circled many people?

[2^Oscar]

(Original post by estel)
Have you circled many people?

That's part of the problem; don't know anyone who is using it! Plus those that I do know I added when it first came out and, like someone has said, they just went back to Facebook. I added a couple of organisations (you can follow them like on Twitter) but that hasn't been particularly interesting.

I think it looks like it could have been good if it had been brought out earlier

[python05]

People might start using it if they get annoyed with Facebook's increasingly silly changes. Oh wait, no they won't. They'll just bitch about facebook for a few hours, then go straight back to using it.

I use G+ for a few friends that don't want to use FB and it's quite handy for that. Personally, I quite like the fact that you don't 'friend' people as you would on FB rather add them to circles. Probably because I'm an antisocial bastard! ^_^

[gumball]

It is generally a better interface for "proper" discussions. If you want to post and talk about a news report or something else, you can actually do this, and not get ignored.

I saw this on G+ which nicely summarised the situation:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-_.../whatworks.jpg

[ConnorB]

I wish it did take off. I hardly ever use Facebook now.

[A.J10]

Whilst I prefer g+ to Facebook, you'll need to get more people to change to make it worthwhile. Add in the fact that everyone's photos from years back are on Facebook and you have even less reason to switch.

What g+ needs is a unique point, rather than just being better. Facebook did it by using real names instead of usernames, not allowing people to bastardize their profile layout and so on, you remember what it was like on other sites where people had music and horrible widgets everywhere.

This was posted from The Student Room's Android App on my E15i

[python05]

We could all add each other? :P

My profile is here.

[Daviant]

(Original post by 2^Oscar)
As in the title.

It looks like it's an improvement on other social network websites that I've used but, after it's been out for quite a while now, my homepage is still pretty bare.

Has anyone actually been using it or know someone who has? I've heard it's meant to be pretty good if you can get it going properly but I have no idea how to do this with so few people on it!

Eclipsed by facebook. There is no good reason for one to transition from facebook to Google+, and no reason to have active profiles on both.

[Snagprophet]

I saw no incentive for yet another social network.

[katehlouise]

Google+ would be great if people actually used it. I have two people on there that use it constantly (one deleted his facebook).

[dgeorge]

I've got it, got a couple friends that do. The issue is that EVERYBODY STILL USES FACEBOOK. For some reason, Google managed to get a few "early adopters", but the masses simply didn't abandon facebook as was planned. I think, at the very least, that facebook is such a platform for conversation, it would be very hard for most people to leave it. And many, like me, went to G+ for a few weeks before ignoring it and switching back to facebook

[+ polarity -]

(Original post by A.J10)
Add in the fact that everyone's photos from years back are on Facebook and you have even less reason to switch.

There are plenty of old pictures on MySpace but that's deadout

[f1mad]

It's ****.

[f1mad]

(Original post by dgeorge)
I've got it, got a couple friends that do. The issue is that EVERYBODY STILL USES FACEBOOK. For some reason, Google managed to get a few "early adopters", but the masses simply didn't abandon facebook as was planned. I think, at the very least, that facebook is such a platform for conversation, it would be very hard for most people to leave it. And many, like me, went to G+ for a few weeks before ignoring it and switching back to facebook

Google+ made the mistake of having it as invite only. A detrimental mistake.

[Mazzini]

I did have it but left due to privacy concerns.

It's kind of derided amongst my friend circles (how ironic ) as being 'hipster' and 'for the cool kids' because it's always them who switch first.

[dgeorge]

(Original post by f1mad)
Google+ made the mistake of having it as invite only. A detrimental mistake.

This isn't necessarily a mistake. Gmail did the same thing, and people were kicking in doors to get invites.

Then again, I think Google failed to SPECIFY exactly how this was different or better than facebook. Whereas with most of their other products, the difference/improvement is easily seen or quantifiable (e.g. with Gmail, offering what was back then 200 times more storage space than any of the other challengers)

I think the main problem is differentiation here, they need a distinct selling point instead of just saying its a "better" or "easier" social network IMHO

[f1mad]

(Original post by dgeorge)
This isn't necessarily a mistake. Gmail did the same thing, and people were kicking in doors to get invites.

Then again, I think Google failed to SPECIFY exactly how this was different or better than facebook. Whereas with most of their other products, the difference/improvement is easily seen or quantifiable (e.g. with Gmail, offering what was back then 200 times more storage space than any of the other challengers)

I think the main problem is differentiation here, they need a distinct selling point instead of just saying its a "better" or "easier" social network IMHO

A UPS and how the users get to the service go hand in hand. That is, the number of users would increase depending on how great the demand for said UPS is.

As you said, Google+ to this day still haven't explained what the real purpose of it is. They try to portray the view of imitating the purpose of Facebook, that is, to section off each part of your daily life into "Circles". Whilst its adopters take the view of it, being a service that connects you with 'like-minded' folk.

Furthermore, creating the service based on invite-only was a ridiculous move. Google must've thought Google+ was bound to go viral: how wrong were they. The only way Google+ was going to go viral was, if there was a real incentive to be there that was not offered elsewhere. Clearly this was not the case. At first they attempted to create a re-built version of Facebook (which was clearly presented at that time - check out the promotions and advertisements), however, they failed at step one by making it invite only.

In 'social media' time is money. Effectively saying to the user: "get an invite or gtfo" goes in the opposite sense of that notion. I believe Google+ would've been a whole lot more successful, had they not be obsessed with the idea of invite-only; which back-fired on them to this day. 100+million users on Google+ is nothing to shout about, when it is plastered on Google.com - the most visited page on the internet.