Google launched their own social network as a limited beta a week ago and named it Google + and personally, I love it.
One thing Google downplayed with the social network was friend numbers and followers, something really important on Twitter and less important on Facebook.
Google engineer, DeWitt Clinton, talked a bit about how he has seen the growth of Google + and how he is surprised by how fast things have evolved on the network, even within the limited test.
Here is a copy of what he wrote on his Google + Post:
I'm not a big fan of numbers games—they're a signal, but at best a fungible one, and always highly dependent on external factors—but perhaps worth noting in passing (and then moving on) that by sometime later today I'll have added more people to circles, and have been added to more circles, on Google+ than I have friends or followers on Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other network, and we're not yet a full week into limited field trial. I had expected this to happen eventually, but certainly not so soon.
Here is a screen shot of his numbers:
Mine, on my Google + account is no where near DeWitt's, where I am only in about 1,300 circles. Yes, I am getting into the number game. But DeWitt has a point, Google + is really strong with the engagement.
But what matters much more than raw numbers is engagement, of course, and so far I've been pleased, to say the least, both with the activity on my own posts and with the activity on the posts that I follow. This is a conversational media and a rich media, and from what I can tell it is working well as both.
Where do I find the most engagement? Honestly, mostly on Twitter, then my blog comments, then Google + and then Facebook. But Google + is a limited beta and I can see it growing and surpassing the other networks. It is just so easy to engagement and have a stream of conversation there. More so on Facebook, at least for me.
It is always nice to see Google's view on their own products. So there you have it.
Forum discussion at Google + Post.
