Google+ Really Has the Hang of the Follower Count Game

More than 10,000 people have added me to one of their Google+ “circles” in the past month. Just under 12,000 have followed me on Twitter in the past four years.

At this point, I essentially use Google+ like I use Twitter; almost everything I post is public, and more often that not it relates to my stories about the social Web — which tend to be topical to the early Google+ discussion. (I use Facebook more for personal relationships, so I’m not including it in this comparison.)

As another apples-to-almost-apples benchmark, Twitter says officially that it has registered 200 million accounts over its entire history, while Google+ had 10 million as of July 15 (likely many more by now; it’s growing like crazy).

I’m sure there’s some inflation going on from me getting on Google+ the first day it was open to outsiders, and from the alignment in interests between me and other early Google+ users. Plus, Google+ is not yet cluttered up with business accounts, though many people are clamoring for them.

More than any other social network I’ve used, Google+ has the feeling of having been birthed fully formed, having learned from what came before it. And it’s not just Google that’s learned from experience: Tens of millions of people are already using Google+, and these users are quite familiar with how social networks work, and how they’re often more interesting when you are connected to more people.

“When I signed up for Twitter, I did not know what it was all about, and I only knew a handful of people there at first. When I signed up at FB, I was so lost and it took me awhile to learn my way around. Years later I sign up here on G+ much more well seasoned, in terms of social networking. I want to dive in, and I already have a much better working knowledge of what it’s all about. Consequently I am much more inclined to add people quickly.”

Versus Twitter, Google+ posts often seem like more of a conversation. Twitter posts are constrained to 140 characters, and responses to posts are basically one-to-one conversations that aren’t easily threaded. On Google+, comment threads can stretch into lengthy discussions.

Even though Google+ seems to be so effective at getting us to click to make connections between each other, that isn’t necessarily its goal. Google+ was obviously built to compete with the business and mindshare currently held by Facebook more than Twitter.

Already Google has said that more than two-thirds of Google+ activity so far is private, which would mean it exists out of the realm of follower counts. But all the while, Google seems to have figured out ways to fertilize a more public style of sharing, too.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.