Whatever's ailing G+ doesn't appear to be the new design
It's not helping. But an analysis +CircleCount just posted shows that a sharp declining trend had started before the 2016 U.S. election. Data are for 210 active profiles on +Gideon Rosenblatt's recent monster post. See:
https://plus.google.com/+CircleCount/posts/d9YHJSABnQW
(The coloured numbers refer to events, mostly G+ related product changes. Plotted are +1s, reshares, and comments, per post.)
1. Engagement was already falling off, by ~September, 2016, best I can tell.
2. There was a sharp decline immediately following the release (5), which is typical for earlier redesigns (2 & 3), but ...
3. That recovered, still...
4. The decline that was evident prior to the release continued afterward. With smoothed data, I don't think the engagement trend changed at all.
Question occurs to me: what happened in September/October, and continued happening through now?
For myself, I've serious concerns about Google as an attractive hacking target for ... well, pretty much anyone. It's simply too big, and has too much data.
It also has, and I give credit, good defences and procedures. Much more reliable than Mastodon, IMO, though the diversity of host nodes may help (or not if they're all equivalently compromised).
Looking back -- the new release was a non-event (not to be confused with "anon event"), but certainly didn't help reverse anything either.
I'd love to know if other Google services see any similar trends.
It's not helping. But an analysis +CircleCount just posted shows that a sharp declining trend had started before the 2016 U.S. election. Data are for 210 active profiles on +Gideon Rosenblatt's recent monster post. See:
https://plus.google.com/+CircleCount/posts/d9YHJSABnQW
(The coloured numbers refer to events, mostly G+ related product changes. Plotted are +1s, reshares, and comments, per post.)
1. Engagement was already falling off, by ~September, 2016, best I can tell.
2. There was a sharp decline immediately following the release (5), which is typical for earlier redesigns (2 & 3), but ...
3. That recovered, still...
4. The decline that was evident prior to the release continued afterward. With smoothed data, I don't think the engagement trend changed at all.
Question occurs to me: what happened in September/October, and continued happening through now?
For myself, I've serious concerns about Google as an attractive hacking target for ... well, pretty much anyone. It's simply too big, and has too much data.
It also has, and I give credit, good defences and procedures. Much more reliable than Mastodon, IMO, though the diversity of host nodes may help (or not if they're all equivalently compromised).
Looking back -- the new release was a non-event (not to be confused with "anon event"), but certainly didn't help reverse anything either.
I'd love to know if other Google services see any similar trends.
