I'm sure the trend lines look about the same, but the absolute numbers have to be quite a bit off as they aren't including black navbar induced visits.

I'm not a big G+ user, I followed a bunch of people who post publicly, I visit maybe once a day just to see if there is something interesting...but my visits are probably 15-1 nav bar to clicking a G+ link somewhere in the open web.

After the recent Google Reader update where they removed Reader's social features in favor of G+, people are now actually using G+ to +1 RSS items. Before the G+ integration, you could see over 100 people "liked" each xkcd post. Now, all that activity has shifted over to people +1'ing each post (to the tune of thousands of +1's per xkcd post).

I wonder what the breakout for follower dynamics looks like between Twitter, G+ and Facebook. In my limited anecdotal experience, Twitter is great for celebrities to mass advertise themselves with huge follower counts. G+ is niche enough that you can communicate back and forth and be heard on posts. Nobody uses Fb's subscribe feature.

The reasoning in the article is a bit off for evaluating the popularity of a website. Saying the usage has dropped in 11 of 21 isn't surprising. Many websites gain users in a pattern of big spikes, followed by steep drops, but with the new plateau higher than the before the spike.

When it's a blog, the big spikes come when posts goes viral. I'm not sure what would be the big spikes for google+ now that the public launch has happened. Maybe just a bunch of little spikes in their case.

I don't know but i kind of find the linux kernel, debian, or rather the linux community in general quite active there. Its seems to be a wonderful platform for blogging and sharing in public, but less of a facebook type of a hangout. Moreover, the posts there have more active discussions than similar posts in tumblr or blogger.

I got on board early, hoping that friends and family will eventually move over from Facebook. A handful did in the beginning but eventually I realized that nobody is moving from Facebook. I eventually turned my G+ off completely. I think Google just doesn't know Social and they will eventually be folding.

Why do you prefer Google to Facebook?

You mean Facebook over Google? I don't prefer it, but that's where most of the average Internet users are.

Switching costs for users are too high, that's why i.e. most of their friends can't be bothered to move.

The early data appears to show usage increasing until the pseudonym purges started -- which is also when the press coverage shifted from glowing to mixed.

G+ is too damn confusing. That is all.

The circle feature, while nice, makes it look like a ghost town.

I don't put people that are not on G+ in my circles so when they sign up, they see an empty feed. Facebook knows that you need a minimum amount of friends in order to find the service useful. With G+ and the circles, this threshold is higher and more difficult to reach as there are less users.

Google+ needed to make something useful for people with few to no friends. To at least counter the chicken and egg issue.

Search for topics that interest you... add those people to a circle.. voila - you have a bunch of people you can share things and discuss with. I have a circle of VC's & angels, a circle for Python enthusiasts, a circle of C#/.NET enthusiasts, etc. My stream is always full of new and interesting discussions.

I don't think G+ will be a "social network" like Facebook. And that's a good thing. There's a reason im not on Facebook but I still use Twitter and G+. A lot of the people I talk to feel the same way.

What's more interesting to you... A) Reading about your friend's drama issues or B) Reading about the latest, coolest startups and technologies?

A) Facebook B) G+

neither, i don't want to hear about my friend's dramas or about startup successes. both made me irritated or jealous =)

"What's hot on Google" stream, seems to have been introduced to mitigate the chicken and egg issue...

It's worse than a ghost town actually, it is not even haunted!

It depends on who is spinning the news, see:

Google+ Sees Its 3rd Largest Week Since Launch http://searchengineland.com/report-google-sees-its-3rd-large...

G+ is bigger than Istagram and Foursquare combined yet Google bashing persists for some reason.

Having burnt several times more money and time (person years) in engineering and marketing, G+ can't smile about being bigger than Instagram!

Why not? it's younger than Intagram and one has to start somewhere. Also it's natural fit for Google, they have disparate social feature for disparate products and now they can unify them, it's mission isn't to kill Facebook.