Despite Google’s claim that the network is growing rapidly, a study came out showing the exact opposite. According to RJ Metrics, 30% of users who make a public post never do it again.
They looked at the public posts from a population of 40,000 Google + users, but only one third was applicable to the study because the rest did not have public posts available.
Additional critical findings from the study:
- The average time between any two public posts is 12 days
- Public post on Google+ on average has less than one reply, reshare and +1
- There is only a 15% chance a user will post for the sixth time after their fifth post
Furthermore, comScore found that Google+ users spent an average of 3.3 minutes on the site in January compared to 7.5 hours for Facebook.
Google still boasts 180 million users and made the following comments regarding the study. They felt that the study was not representative of the entire Google + population because it only focused on public posts. Stated by their representative, “as we’ve said before, more sharing occurs privately to circles and individuals than publicly on Google+. The beauty of Google+ is that it allows you to share privately – you don’t have to publicly share your thoughts, photos or videos with the world.”