> Most people didn't hear about it.
Lots of people did. But then they couldn't get an account. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-05-20%202...
Re:Why Google+ Failed
by dredmorbius on Thursday June 20, 2019 @06:30PM
(#20238066)
I'd argue the problem was more one of the marketing / promotion than the closed beta.
The second spike in the trends graph corresponds with the open access public announcement. Interest spiked, but did not sustain.
It's the lack of sustain that hurt G+ in the end. And much of that was due to a very raw early release -- no search, little content, and very muddled concepts, many never really fixed.
Most people didn't hear about it. You can ask people on the street. They sure know facebook. Excitement is not a good way to motivate people to move platforms, in general (despite the niche cases like Fyre Festival which are relatively small). Maybe they should have gotten some celebrity support? Otherwise the excitement wasn't mainstream. G+ needed mainstream users.
> But people did want to join Google+, but they couldn't
That doesnt explain the lack of participation a year later. Nobody wanted G+ because they didn't need it. Even if it gave some benefit (which it couldn't) it didn't join with their existing Social Media data making a higher barrier.