Is Google+ Really Taking Off?

I think this is just like Google Wave. Everyone's excited about it, but no one's switching over. Except Google+ is a little better integrated than Wave was.

I think it is I can find most of my friends on there.. only time will tell

Facebook took years to take off. Part of that was the fact they made it exclusive to draw people into the site. People want what they can't have, once they have it they either are like meh, or they get addicted to it before the enthusiasm wears off.

Here's what I think about social networks: It's hard to get people to switch to your social network, but it's even harder to get them to stay. Why is this? People go to where their friends are. I'm on Google+, but only one or two of my friends are, so I'm not a Google+ regular. This is the perfect example of "It's even harder to get people to stay."

I believe there is a fundamental misunderstanding about what Google+ is for, and I'm not sure if it's Google's fault, or whether it's the media or whether it's just an amalgamation of those plus a general lack of insight within the population of social media users.

Frankly, Google+ isn't Facebook. It's not Twitter, either. Google+ is its own network. A lot has been written by very smart folks about the social graph versus the interest graph, and if you want to round out your understanding, I highly recommend doing some research on those buzzwords and what they really mean.

Speaking as someone who uses Google+ extensively, I can tell you the following things:

• I use Google+ to follow interesting people I don't know in real life. About 5,000 of them.
• I use Google+ to follow my interests, and there are tons of interest-based communities on the network.
• I use Google+ to categorize content I want to see. Following 5,000 people would be ridiculous without the sleek organizational tools provided by the Google+ network.
• I aggressively put people who make great comments into my Circles. I remove them if they don't post interesting content to my Streams.
• I cannot, for the life of me, understand how Google+ can be seen as a "Ghost Town" when I see so much activity in my Streams.
• You get out what you put in. Try creating a new Twitter account or a new Facebook account, adding no one, and then revisit in a week. See if that's not a ghost town, too.