Google+ has only been around for six-and-a-half weeks, but has already earned the title of the fastest growing website. Some have written off Google’s success as a temporary side-effect of the Google brand, but recent HitWise data shows that Plus is already heading into the “early adopters” stage.
Plus’s User-Base Transformation
The chart above shows how Google’s user-base has changed since HitWise started tracking demographics (July 9th, approximately two weeks after launch). Early on, only two groups showed substantially on Plus: “Colleges and Cafes,” which is comprised of young technology lovers, and “Status-Seeking Singles,” which is comprised of young, single people in the early phases of their career. The experiment-happy “Colleges and Cafes” group quickly dropped up, but other more powerful – and more mainstream – segments have picked up.
Most prominently, this includes the wealthy suburb-dwellers (“Kids and Cabernet”) and older individuals nearing retirement (“Full Pockets, Empty Nests”). The increased attention of these two segments show that we’ve reached the early adoption portion of the innovation adoption lifecycle – past the “innovators,” but before the “late majority.”
It’s been hard to say if Google+ had long-haul potential, especially considering that its current size – despite the early boom – reaches only about 4% the population of Facebook. However, there are incentives on the horizon, including indications that Google will be offering business-specific utilities in the next few months and that any cut Google takes from on-site transactions are likely to be lower than those taken by Facebook (5% for Google thus far versus 30% for Facebook). The news that Plus is moving quickly into a wider field of adoption is a good sign for those who are already poised to strike at Google+’s services as they come out, and a call to action for those who haven’t yet developed a strategy.
[Sources include: HitWise & Google Watch]
