How Big is Google+?

By | July 25, 2013

I’m not convinced, based on anecdotal evidence but nothing more, by stories like these that Google+ is gaining on Facebook and overtaking twitter: 

But how to measure it? It’s not easy. 

One way, I figured, was to look at the most popular pages/profiles on the three services and compare them. This wouldn’t be perfect, but I thought would be as good an indicator as any at how mainstream Google+ had gotten, both in terms of followers of the main kinds of people, things and products popular on other services, but also indicative of how those brands/people felt about Google+. It might also reveal whether Google+ is attracting a different kind of person/product/brand/interest. 

Of course, it also doesn’t say a lot of things, Maybe the tail is a different shape on Google+. Maybe the layout of Google+ doesn’t so easily lend itself to following/liking/adding to circling/+ing pages. But it kind of does: in fact, Google+ is baked into so much other Google stuff these days that it’s hard not to like, as it were, pages, comments, stuff. I’d argue that it’s easier to do that. 

So I went ahead, selecting the top 20 pages on each according to SocialBakers. Most were celebrities, of course, and most overlapped — meaning they featured on more than one service. If they only featured on one, I dumped them (eg ‘Facebook for every phone’ is massive, 274 million Likes, but not really relevant to this exercise.) 

My conclusion in short: Google+ is way behind both Facebook and Twitter. No way is it getting close, at least based on this metric. (And only this metric, so far.) 

My longer conclusion: 

  • of the 48 profiles measured, only 8 were more popular on Google+ than on Facebook. 
  • of the 48 profiles measured, only 9 were more popular on Google+ than on Twitter. 
  • These includes photographer Thomas Hawk, Google’s Vic Gundotra and Larry Page, Richard Branson and, Hugh Jackson. A motley group. 
  • Most mainstream celebs had way more followers on Twitter than Google+: 
    • Britney Spears (4x)
    • Bruno Mars (9x)
    • Cristiano Ronaldo (7x)
    • Justin Timberlake (34x)
  • Most mainstream celebs had way more followers on Facebook than Google+: 
    • Barack Obama (12x) 
    • Beyonce (1,774x) 
    • Britney Spears (4x) 
    • Bruno Mars (20x) 
    • Cristiano Ronaldo (22)
    • Kim Kardashian (7x)
    • Lady Gaga (8x) 
    • Usher (8x) 
  • Quite a few celebrities don’t seem to have bothered with Google+ at all, as far as I can see. 
    • Eminem
    • AKON
    • Beyonce
    • Jennifer Lopez
    • Justin Bieber
    • Katy Perry
    • Linkin Park
    • Nicki Minaj
    • P!nk
  • Even those who score big on Google+ score bigger on other services. Here’s Google+’s Top 4 :
    1. Lady Gaga – 8x as many fans on Facebook, 5x on Twitter
    2. Britney Spears – 4x on Facebook and Twitter
    3. David Beckham – 5x on Facebook, but negligible on Twitter (unless you count his wife) 
    4. Snoop Dogg – 5x on Facebook, 2x on Twitter
  • Although it may not mean much, adding together all the likes/followers etc for the 48 profiles counted, the totals convey, I suspect, a pretty good idea of the difference in popularity: 
    • Facebook: 1.6 billion
    • Twitter: 612 million
    • Google+: 130 million
  • The number of likes (well, pluses/circles) that would get you top spot on Google+ — 7.3 million — would only rank you about 600th on Facebook (Oasis, say, or Cuddling.) 
  • Another thing to do might be to measure the activity on these pages — when last uploaded, likes/retweets etc — but that’s for another day. 

This is just a personal project, and not affiliated with my employer. I’d welcome thoughts and insights which help hone this approach, or ditch it in favour of a better one. 

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