Last week ComScore reported that the average Google+ user only spent 3 minutes on the site in January. This was immediately met with comparisons to social media giant Facebook, whose users averaged almost 7 hours a month on their site. Likewise, Pinterest managed 89 minutes, Twitter received 21 minutes, and LinkedIn got 17 minutes. Even the lowly MySpace received more traffic from their users, with an average of 8 minutes during the month. Sounds like the demise of Google+, doesn’t it. Well that was the reaction in the industry, for the most part. This study resulted in a barrage of criticisms, writing Google+ off as another Google social media failure. But was it really? Does Google care how many minutes you spend on Google+ each month?
The answer is no. Truth be told, once you’ve signed up, they’ve got everything they need. Your info.
Think about it. How does Google make all of it’s money? Ads. And what is the key success factor to these ads? Targeting and relevancy. When Google+ was launched, everyone chalked it up to be their effort to take traffic away from Facebook. While this may be partly true, the true advantage that Facebook had over Google at the time was personal targeting. Users have made ad targeting so easy for Facebook by providing them with not only their demographic information, such as age and gender, but also with very personal information such as their relationship status, what bands they like, their hobbies, etc.
While Google is, and always has been, the king of Search, this was an opportunity that they were missing out on. And with over 90 million Google+ signups already, they are succeeding in what they planned out to do. Google’s VP of product management Bradley Horowitz has even said that “Google+ is growing by every metric we care about.” Interesting. If they don’t care about time on site, or engagement, they must care about something else.
Think about this. Let’s say you sign up for Google+, and you’ve provided them with some information about yourself – age, gender, education, employer, places you’ve lived, etc. Now combine that with all of the other information you’ve given Google via Search, Gmail, Maps, and every other Google product. Looks like they can paint a pretty good picture of you, doesn’t it?
Now it’s up to Google. They have what they want – your data. The question now is, how will they use it to defeat the likes of Facebook and Twitter?
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