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Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

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Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#32

Just a datapoint, but out of all the invitations I sent out when G+ first launched (100-150, I don't recall), 40 or 50 friends signed up. ~3 of them still use it at least once a week. From my observations, G+ still seems to consist primarily of three major user groups: 1. Tech celebrities 2. Technologists in general 3. Non-US users Facebook's feature set is killer, but at some point, I really would like to use some s…

In my case, 0% of my friends went to G+ initially. Now they're slowly trickling in.

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot professional photographers...

Yup and also remember that Facebook beat MySpace because of the techie users. It's not the masses that determine success its the influencers.

Were you around when Facebook came out? Its early users were not tech types.

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#34
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy patents apparently :-) More seriously, I asked once about this when they were removing bottled water from the local mini-kitchens and dropping over 1 billion dollars a quarter into the bank. My question was "Gee, can't you spare a couple of million this quarter to keep the bottled water restocked?" and obviously the answer was that they could not. But from a corporate/strategic point of view having a lot of cash…

Removing bottled water is not a financial decision, but an environmental one. Every new employee is given a water bottle they can fill with water an infinite number of times. If they took away bottled water, I'm sure they replaced them with fruit juice, organic teas and all sorts of ambrosia.

I should have noted that the bottled water 'discussion' at Google was long and heated and what Googler's would call a multi-centa-thread [1]. There were folks who shared the position stated above that it was environmentally 'better' to not have bottled water in the mini-kitchens. And there were folks of a more empiricist frame of mind who analyzed data and came to an alternative conclusions. Understand the company is very data driven.

Watching it unfold was educational on so many levels.

[1] A 'Centa-thread' being an email discussion that gets to 100 replies where Gmail would fork it and start new conversation.

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#35

I know I need to just be patient and wait for Apps users to get Profiles/Plus, but I don't find it particularly sympathetic of Google when they keep saying that "everyone" can use Google+ now, even in their financial results announcements. From the CEO. (Yes, technically anyone can use it by signing up with a free @gmail.com account, but I consider that a cop out.)

You don't need to use a gmail account. You just need to create a Google login that isn't an Apps login. You can use the same domain as your apps account - I use that, just with a slightly different username for Google+

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#36
How do they define 'user', for Google+? Facebook's metric is 'active users' which I believe are people who have visited the site during the past 30 days.

If Google+'s definition of 'user' is simply someone who has registered for a Google+ profile, then they are overcounting enormously.

My feeling is that they are indeed disingenuously overcounting, in the same way they do with Android, where they talk about the number of 'activations' rather than device sales.

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#37
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the quarter, which would be over 3% for the year. Which doesn't seem to bad if your not putting your money into overly risky things. Treasury bonds may be yielding less?

You're right: The long bond is less, so what are they invested in? "Marketable securities" with 3% yield means that they have something not AAA (which probably makes sense on such a large cash hoard) but there will come a day when interest rates go up. That will cause the value of their bonds to drop substantially. Hell, I'd like 3% on my money.

Get a rewards checking account: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/775437/

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#38
Scanning through the comments here, in the media, and lots of tech blogs, google+ is taking a bit of a battering. Everyone seems to be hating on it.

Sure, it's quite likely it will never "beat" facebook, but what happened to: http://xkcd.com/918/

I'm still very happy there is an alternative. I don't care if people think two social networks is one too many. Competition is good.

Facebook = { All the people I know (pretty much) }

Google+ = { All the people I care about what they have to say }

I think google+ will always have a place, regardless of whether it crushes fbook in terms of active users or not.

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#39

Just a datapoint, but out of all the invitations I sent out when G+ first launched (100-150, I don't recall), 40 or 50 friends signed up. ~3 of them still use it at least once a week. From my observations, G+ still seems to consist primarily of three major user groups: 1. Tech celebrities 2. Technologists in general 3. Non-US users Facebook's feature set is killer, but at some point, I really would like to use some s…

[deleted]

Re: Google Announces Q3 2011 Financial Results, Google+ has 40 million users

#40

Their naming /branding scheme is not good. Google + sounds like an API extension or a bad programming language. Sometimes it's better to give a product a human face...beginning with a name that communicates what it is.

.. only if you're a programmer, most of whom would probably know what Google+ really is.
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