Google Plus is Losing Grip with Time!

By Aamir Attaa | 08, Aug 2011 | 39 Comments

Many would not agree with what is stated above, but this is how I look at it: With each passing day Google Plus is losing users’ interest, at least in Pakistan.

Google Plus seemed pretty decent yet dashing when it was launched. Invite-only trick did well for Google as it attracted millions of users in matter of days.

This was when everybody was rushing for invites to explore the wonders that Google Plus had to offer (some junkies even sold Google Plus invites online, BTW if you need one here’s is a way).

But everyone know by now, the product was half baked and was probably launched before time to stand early in line. This half featured product didn’t incentivize the users much. I agree that people can wait for the features to come-in, but their bread-limit is quickly nearing and soon they may stop preferring Google Plus over Facebook.

People could have easily left Google Plus long, that too long earlier, if the product wasn’t from Google. Yes being from the house of Google is itself an advantage, this comes in addition to added value that dozens of Google services bring in for Google Plus. But even the Google or it’s worthy products can’t do much if Plus hasn’t got any anything substantial in it.

The invite-only registrations has clearly lost the hopes of many, who may never return to Google Plus again. And those who were lucky enough to get in are complaining that their friends aren’t there on Google Plus.

Absence of Brands and Businesses is one major factor that’s not mobilizing the masses to get into Google Plus. We know that Google has plans of offering business solutions – but again, delay gonna get costly for Google.

Games, applications, public groups, or they may call it public circles and there is a lot that Google still needs to unveil to equally compete with Facebook.

I believe Google Plus wasn’t meant for weird GIFs and some random videos only. Google should release the rest of features at earliest, they need to be quick, if they got to survive which they likely will.

Image via

http://www.ngtech.pk Ahmedij

Totally agree.
Rez

Ihope it loose the grip further and eat dust with time, not that i hate Google’s products, but its the evil monopolistic mind set behind it. They are into “Local” as well, most of their products are good and user friendly, but they have now crossed the line where they can be classed as creepy or stalkers.

People need to wake up and not let Google control your personal lives, with all their products combined, they can correctly predict about your habits and how your brain works, all because you have provided them enough of data.

They are competing every one and they are in it for money and data collection, it was good when Google was just a search engine.
- Copper
  
  “People need to wake up and not let Google control your personal lives”
  absolutely right!! only Facebook reserves the right to control it. Not only this it has right to organize hate events against Muslims even its Policy state otherwise. But we are so conscienceless we will stick to you!
  - Monster
    
    Hahaha…Nice Answer…!
  - Rez
    
    Facebook is no where close to Google in creepiness, neither did i say you let FB control you, so don’t make something out of air.
    
    Facebook did not organize that event, they just did not ban it, which is condemnable. Again you are making stuff out of air and pure assumptions and talking as if i am providing you an alternative in form of Facebook, this makes you irrational at same time.
    
    Facebook is merely one Google’s many competitors, and stand no chance when it comes to learning user behaviour on internet, user psychology and amount of personal data.
    
    What i was referring to was, that monopolists are in there for money, not for users benefit, its always better if power is spread amongst several entities to keep the equilibrium of power. The healthy competition is always good for users, while monopolistic is the one where users are forced to accept whats fed to them. Nothing good is going to come out of what Google is practising in the long run, it will be a sad day when Google becomes a skynet!
    - WAQAR
      
      Here is the point, Facebook should ban that event as it was announced and pre-planned, it was their duty as they are providing the platform. They have dual standards. And the nature of the issue was so sensitive, that only condemning it is not justifiable. It is our duty to backfire. And tell them that what they have done. Reaction from our side should be like that in future nobody can even think of such an event.
      - Leaving Facebook is one of the many option which will hurt them.
      - If anyone have some stats of FB, that how many users left it after that event.
      - Shahid Saleem
        
        – If anyone have some stats of FB, that how many users left it after that event.
        
        A few hundred thousand supposedly left and never returned.
        
        But only mainly from Pakistan. The event was over a year ago and now there is almost double number of Pakistani users on Facebook.
        
        In reality you CANNOT hurt facebook this way. If all of Pakistan left Facebook, that would be LESS THAN 1% of their users.
- http://www.asktaimoor.com AskTaimoor
  
  @Rez
  I totally agree with you!
  
  But its not just google! facebook is much worse..
Tanveer

An other Flop show by Google !!!
Shahid Saleem

Right now, many people whose opinions I consider worth reading are already on it. More of those people joined G+ than Facebook (but still less than Twitter).

If the people *I CARE ABOUT* are on Google Plus, I don’t care if 99% of the world’s population isn’t on it.

Oh, and in a way I am okay with no brands or companies on G+. One less place for them to “market” to me.
Saad Mubarak

Rez +1
ahsan

Was bound to happen , it’s like stating the obvious!
http://ninja.pk Aaqil Mahmood

This is exactly I started to think two days ago about Google+.

Aamir Atta, you got eagle eyes to notice things.

That is true Google cannot handle social service themselves. Orkut, Google Wave, Google Buzz, Jaiku are examples.

Google is acquiring other companies or hiring employees from other companies to work for their Google+ service, such as Fridge social networking service.

Google+ service was about to be announced on Google I/O 2011, but that failed due to several serious service issues, instead Google+ announcement was replaced with Samsung tablets for everyone participating in I/O 2011.

It is also true, Google+ would be zero if it wasn’t connected to other Google services. For example: Google+ have no own video sharing service, instead they are living with Youtube. No own Chat, Video chat service, instead they are living on Google talk. No own Photos service, instead they are relaying on Google Picasa.

Google Android application is also a completele #fail, too much buggy, or you can say incomplete application has been given to the public. Necessary features like names mentioning and notifications have serious bugs or they aren’t working. A noob like me can create better Android application by learning Android in three weeks. Huddle notifications are received after some hours.

Google+ web notifications from bar are also slow, buggy often giving server errors. Website is the slowest and heaviest among other social networks. Google+ web is 6x times more heavier than other social networks. (My computer specs are 3.0ghz, 1gb ram, 150gb+ free hard disk space, Xp sp2, Linux mint 11). With Google+ web Google chrome the browser famous on eating a lot memory dies soon but Firefox remains breathing normally for about 20 minutes.

Making people curious about service, invite only is old trick of Google since Gmail, Google Wave. To give some more value to the invite option, Google+ have enabled 150 invites quota.

But still I prefer Google+ over Facebook.
- Shahid Saleem
  
  – It is also true, Google+ would be zero if it wasn’t connected to other Google services. For example: Google+ have no own video sharing service, instead they are living with Youtube. No own Chat, Video chat service, instead they are living on Google talk. No own Photos service, instead they are relaying on Google Picasa.
  
  Man, are you serious? Do you think if Google did not have Picasa, Youtube etc they would NOT have picture or video sharing? If they didn’t have Picasa, dont you think you would CREATE a picture sharing service for G+? Just like how every other social networking site does?
  
  Very strange that you think that something is wrong with REUSING their own services instead of creating specific services for G+. In fact, linking the other services with G+ is what makes it greater than Facebook or naseeb dot com or something!
  
  – With Google+ web Google chrome the browser famous on eating a lot memory dies soon but Firefox remains breathing normally for about 20 minutes.
  
  By the way I hit control-escape on my chrome (14.0.835.18 dev on linux/32bit) and look what I saw: gmail, g+, g+ pictures three tabs all take total of 250MB (chrome running for six hours). Facebook (just one tab) is 105MB. What is heavy now?
  
  – Making people curious about service, invite only is old trick of Google since Gmail, Google Wave.
  
  Are you Young to internet? Even gmail was invite-only in 2004. Same with Orkut. And before that Friendster (2003 or 2002 I forget). And LOOOOONG before that Six Degrees in 1998 (yes that is the oldest one I have been on). Invite-only is not a “trick”, it is what companies do to scale slowly. And it makes more sense with G+ because it is still not full release. They have people signing up for API access but no access yet. They have companies signing up for services but no services yet.
  
  What is missing? Your patience.
  - Saad Durrani
    
    I must confess. You sir tell it like it is.
  - admin
    
    Your last is the crux of my write-up, Google is urging us to be patient – but there’s a bread limit, especially when masses has an alternate platform.
  - http://ninja.pk Aaqil Mahmood
    
    @Shahid Saleem
    
    I didn’t mean Google shouldn’t use own services like Picasa, Youtube etc with Google Plus.
    
    What i was saying that what is Google+ in one and half year of development and more than one month of being given to public.
    
    Google team could make only comments and posts system in one and half year?
    
    About Google Chrome heavy browser, I do not know memory or what but sure it is slow for slow and average computers. Does not only depend on Cache or RAM. It uses processor and other system hardware resources too. After a 10 minutes use of Google+ web, if you go to Facebook or Twitter web, you will feel like visiting a much faster site.
    
    Invite only testing phase for few days or weeks was enough. Other Google employees who are not involved in Google+ development have been testing G+ since a year. But these new invitations with new 150 invites quota (which I am sure which never gonna exhaust. Google+ will keep it increasing) seems a marketing business of Google+ team so that people can keep looking for an invite asking and telling everybody around Please I need invite, invitation of this new Google+ service by Google a free and fast advertising of word, making everybody curious to join Google+.
    
    Don’t forget that invite button first was below to other options on the right side. When people became bored of inviting others, G+ team moved invite button above at a more visible place and given it a value with 150 invites quota :)
    
    Also don’t forget Google+ was never really a closed invite only registrations service since start, G+ team them self allowed registrations from notifications of shared posts.
    - Shahid Saleem
      
      Well, I know you mentioned your system specs so here are mine: 2 GB RAM, 1.8GHz processor (in a five year old laptop so usually runs at 800MHz due to Speed Step), slow (5400rpm) hard drive. It runs just fine on my system. In fact, the slowest “site” I visit all the time is gmail, and I always have at least four tabs open: gmail, tweetdeck, facebook, google+. In addition to any other browsing tabs I open.
      
      – Invite only testing phase for few days or weeks was enough.
      
      Two reasons why you are wrong:
      
      Do you know that famous story of the architect who built several office buildings? Instead of building paths between the buildings, he did nothing. For a few weeks he let the office workers walk between buildings on the grass, and then he built walking paths between the buildings *based on what paths the workers took*. Sometimes it makes more sense to build an INCOMPLETE product, give it to some users, see what they do, and then add features based on how they use it. Users do NOT always use things the way you think they well, even after 1 or 2 or even 100 years of “testing”. And what is better way of testing — give it to everyone and try to make sense of all the data you are collecting, or give it to a few people in every region and make it easier to process their user data??
      
      Reason 2: What sites have you worked on? G+ went from a few users to 10 million in 16 days. Can you show me specifications for your website where you can scale fast enough to handle MORE THAN SIX LAKHS NEW USERS A DAY EVERY DAY?
      
      And you know what? No one every saw error messages. Site did not crash for anyone even with that load. Sure there were bugs, but not crashes like even Facebook has once or twice a year at least. It takes Real Software Engineering to accomplish that feat. So for all we know they used invite system because they KNEW they could handle X new users per day but not unlimited users every day. Based on their experiences they could scale up.
      
      Who knows before a site starts how many % of users will add new posts, how many people will add 100 posts/day and how many will add 1 post/week? All the storage requirements: can you or anyone else predict them in advance? In 2007, Facebook said:
      
      60+ million photos added each week which take up 5 terabytes of disk space
      
      3+ billion photo images served to users every day
      
      100,000+ images served per second during our peak traffic windows
      
      source: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2406207130&fb_comment_id=fbc_2406207130_14814299_466342262130
      
      In 2010, Facebook published a paper and now it was 60 terabyte of pictures added a week and over 1 million images served per second (peak). source: http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2010/12/finding-needle-in-haystack-facebooks.html. 10-12x increase in three years. and it is not LINEAR increase either because more people joined facebook in 2010 than in 2008.
      
      – Also don’t forget Google+ was never really a closed invite only registrations service since start, G+ team them self allowed registrations from notifications of shared posts.
      
      No. I received TWO shared posts notifications before I could click and join. I know people who received many shared posts but it still took them several days to join. This includes people in Pakistan and in US so it is not some geographical thing. Not every shared post = new user. In fact, I still have over 20 people in my circles who are not on yet, and I don’t have a lot of large circles (maybe 70 friends, 20 family).
guser

It would be good to get Google’s view on this. Can somebody get Mr Kushnood the country consultant to comment. In my view Google plus is fail. Randoms can add other randoms people. Facebook is light years ahead. Google needs to act quickly.
- Shahid Saleem
  
  – Randoms can add other randoms people. Facebook is light years ahead.
  
  If “add” means “follow” than I confess I totally think you are confused.
  
  Do you understand the fact that if you ADD someone on G+ they do not need to ADD you in return? Do you understand the fact that their posts still remain private against you unless they add you to a circle (or post public)? Facebook does NOT really give you (or them) that option. Twitter does that which is why some people say Twitter should be more worried about G+ than Facebook (G+ =like= Twitter with longer tweets).
  
  This model you call fail is 100% part of how twitter works. In fact Twitter even made custom database for such relationships and made it open source: https://github.com/twitter/flockdb
  
  To make the same point different way: how did you find this blog entry? Are you not a “random” person reading a “random” post? That is what the internet is like! You do not need to give CNIC before visiting a website and reading content. You do not need to “make fraandship” before getting some site’s RSS or ATOM feed and following the content.
http://www.nascentstuff.com/ Nauman Afzal

Its in beta guys, let it grow then we shall see
http://www.usmanmir89.blogspot.com usman mir

at this moment GPlus looks like offspring of facebook and twitter ;]
Dexture

Google+ wont get success this year.But if they keep on copying things like they did with Android then yea it might get success. (I hate android) :p
- http://ninja.pk Aaqil Mahmood
  
  I love Android :P
http://pakforums.pk Junaid

I think google should just sit and maintain what it has done yet.. and give some of the opportunities to others to rule some of the areas of internet… :p
http://www.twitter.com/jahanzaibk Jahanzaib Khalid

I dont think Google Plus could loose its grip because great start ensures its huge database of internet users which can be utilized in favor of becoming no.1 social networking website
http://impaki.net irfan

i love facebook like button, fact is that Google is a search engine not social media.. google should face the reality.
- Shahid Saleem
  
  – fact is that Google is a search engine not social media
  
  So tell me if you search for “used car” what do you want to see in the search results?
  
  1. many different sites that show up because they used SEO successfully? or
  
  2. search results that incorporate what your social network says (what your friends clicked “+1″ on or what your co-workers clicked on)?
  
  Which has more worth to you — opinions of random people, or opinions of your friends? If you don’t say #2, I ask you: do you ever ask your friends for any opinions?
  - http://www.impaki.net IT pakistan
    
    You tell me where to spend most of your time on the web, I guarantee the answer will be Facebook not Google, Google is a tool for us but Fb is now every thing on the web.
Naveed

Gosh !! you guyz are giving death certificate without realizing that they still have some breadth, its true that the reflection is not as noticeable of g+ as they grab the number games comparing other social network initially. Give them some time I remember that once FB launch I have created my account and delete it so experiencing that I still believe give some more time to g+
I am totally disagree g+ collecting our personal information this is what everyone doing here FB, Linkden, twitter so pplz once u connected to internet you just can’t hide yourself and its fact !!
Altaf

It’s too early to give such premature verdict about Google plus dying.

You must first study the history of Google. This is their strategy since first day.

Coming months will show what Google is up to and whether it’s + going to die or it’s going to make it’s mark like it did for other products (except Buzz).

Invite only was there in Gmail as well, but it took off with flying color. This is another way of Google tempting people to wait for it and then grab once it’s available.

I think the writer didn’t do much research and didn’t read Google history. Without solid facts and quantifiable statements, I find this post more of a personal / corridor discussion kind of article than a good piece of research.
Aamir

i dont like google+.. its pure white is kinda annoying.. how to post on someones wall ? no feature on g+.. for now i am sticking with fb hopes g+ comes with huge updates so it can attract us ..
http://azmenau.com Ali Aamir

I think, Google+ can not chase Face-book. soon it will be ended like Google wave.
Ahsan

why not they buy facebook, just like they got Skype when GoogleTalk Voip didn’t work as expected…
Google = copy cat
- Shahid Saleem
  
  Google voice is a major success. I don’t know why you think it did not work as expected. Also, Facebook did not get Skype, Microsoft got Skype and then Facebook got it through a deal.
Saeed

As you guys know FB is always against our ISLAM and i don’t know why peoples in Pakistan still with them.

I have no account in FB but in + i have it. Keep Islam is always on top and then these other things.

Plz Shutdown FB and open your account on +.
- Shahid Saleem
  
  G+ is 100% controlled by Google. Youtube and Blogger are also 100% controlled by Google. Yet there is anti-Islam content on Youtube and Blogger and yet you prefer to use G+? Why not close your + account?
  
  Or do you have one rule for Google and another rule for Facebook?
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