I have seen people redefining the purpose of Google+ faster and more frequently than a politician doing the two-step when realizing their current position might impact the chance for re-election! And yet the truth remains – while Google continues to integrate properties with Google+ … the impact of the service is non-existent, less than any other social media site.
According to MarketingLand, Google+ drives a trivial amount of sharing traffic compared to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or even YouTube. This matches the findings of a study from July showing Google+ drove only 2% of social sharing.
Of course some claim that Google+ is different from those sites and shouldn’t be compared. But then the question stands – what IS the purpose? If social interaction, sharing, influencing social habits, and general traffic are not the goals of the service … exactly what IS?
Google+ is different. The people I follow on there are usually different than who I follow on Facebook. I find more new things on Google+ than Facebook… But I usually share stuff I find on Google+ on Twitter and Facebook. My Google+ feed also moves faster than my Facebook news feed as well. I think this is mostly because I read the public stream.
I think part of this difference is because of the circles that have been a part of Google+ since the start. I think it’s because of this that not all sharing gets recorded. More sharing happens privately on Google+ than on Facebook.
Just things I notice since In use both.
But sharing to a circle is still ‘sharing’ … and is counted in these numbers according to all of the reports. And there has been report after report after report – and all come back to the same thing: Google+ has no impact.
At BEST it is a fun little insular community. That is certainly how I end up using it – aside from just dumping things there.