With the launch of Google+ less than 1 month ago, today marks a historic moment. They have reached the 20 million user mark. Now the question is what happens from here. Well, based on my math (which isn’t always the best), this shows two interesting trends. The first the overall adoption of social platforms as a must have thing, as well as the fact that the beat the 3 years it took Facebook to reach the same number.
Lets take a look at the adoption rate topic. In the past you had to take careful steps to launch a new social site. Creating a great user interface, ensuring a low number of bugs, determining your wonderful method for friending or following. Now Google releases something, and that is about it. It is something no one quite knows how to use yet, they aren’t sure what the purpose is, SEO activists don’t know what it will mean for websites, you can’t integrate Google Domain profiles yet, etc, etc ,etc. So how did they get the 20 million users in less than a month then? Well, it is the general adoption of social media (and Google in general). It is now almost required that you are on every single social outlet in the world. You have to blog here, tweet this, and generally let everyone know what you are doing at anyone given second.
On the other hand, you have the topic of simply the speed in which Google has closed the gap on Facebook, and other social media outlets. In less than 1 month they have 20 million users. That is:
- 3% of Facebook’s 687 million users which tool almost 7 years to build
- 6% of Twitter’s 300 million users
- 320% more than Tumblr’s 6.25 million users
So how did they do it? Well they more or less stole Facebook’s model… exclusivity. It isn’t open. You must be invited, and that gives it an air of mystery. additionally they came right out and said that their whole new UI is based on a new “social experiment”. It is like telling people, I am changing my hair color to purple because Santa told me that was the color of his suit this year. Everyone wants to see it. Everyone wants to believe it is true.
Well it is, now the question arises if Google can sustain this platform. They have had failures in the social market with things like Google buzz, but what will make this different. Probably the unique fact that it is all a plan, and maybe one that is happening at exactly the right time. The American Customer Satisfaction Index just released it’s July numbers, and Facebook is at number 16 out of 226.