Is Google+ The ‘Purest’ Social Network?

David Seaman

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As Outlaw readers know, I’m a huge Google+ fanboy. After using the service exclusively for some time (no more Twitter or Facebook for me!), I have an interesting theory that will please fellow Google+ disciples, and annoy nearly everyone else:

Google+ is the purest online “social network” ever created.

Allow me to explain. Whereas Facebook is somewhat parasitic, benefiting from your real world connections (campus friends, co-workers, etc.) and allows you to voyeuristically keep tabs on such contacts in return, my Google+ “circles” so far are an eclectic mix of people I know in real life, people I consider to be friends yet have never met in real life, and — perhaps most important — total strangers who share similar interests.

Over time, the total strangers become “people I consider to be friends.”

In other words, I’ve met intriguing people on Google+ that I would not have otherwise met. I’ve put something into the network (inviting my real-life friends and colleagues), yet I’ve also gotten something out of it. I’ve met new, smart people — that’s really the point of networking, isn’t it? 

Twitter, with its 140 character limit and propensity toward celebrity worship (look at how many followers Ashton Kutcher has! More than CNN! Oh, and look, Shaq is at the mall!), was never a great way to meet like-minded souls. It is a broadcast tool, not a networking platform. 

LinkedIn came somewhat closer to the Platonic ideal of a social network, especially when prominent CEOs and executives began using the service.

Unfortunately, they quickly got flooded with the perennial job seekers and tactless social climbers — the exact kinds of people a CEO or top-level exec would prefer not to deal with all day long. Instead, CEOs want to interact with their peers and customers: here’s a customer who likes our product, here’s a photo of my friend’s new custom-built yacht, here’s me skydiving in the South Pacific, etc.

Google+ is a much more welcoming home for the corporate elite, celebrities, and technorati who tried LinkedIn, but just as swiftly left after a deluge of unsolicited resumes and crazy pitches headed their way.

Google+, on a good day, feels much more like an intriguing industry mixer than an online social network.

The conversation is deep, the people are fun, and if someone misbehaves all it takes is a silent “Block” or a removal from your circles and they are effectively gone from your life forever. No awkward de-friending required. 

If you put time into building up your Google+ network, you’ll be rewarded with a wide range of new contacts and friends from all over the globe. I can’t say the same for any of the other major networking platforms.

Add David on Google+

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Report: Half of Americans Are Now Social Networkers

The percentage of adult Internet users using sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn is now 65 percent, up from 61 percent a year ago, according to a report released Friday by the Pew Research Center. Accounting for the percentage of adults who don’t use the Internet at all, that still means that half of all Americans now use social networking sites, Pew researchers said.

The number of Americans using such sites has exploded since 2005, when Pew found that just 8 percent of Internet users, or about 5 percent of all adult Americans, said they did. The percentage of Internet users saying they use social networking sites has more than doubled since 2008, when 29 percent of respondents said they were using them, according to the Pew survey.

Pew reported that women aged 18 to 29 are the most voracious users of social networking sites, with 89 percent of Internet users in that group participating in such sites and 69 percent of them reporting that they do so daily. Accounting for all age groups, 69 percent of adult women using the Internet said they’re social networkers as compared with 60 percent of men.

That’s been the case since at least 2008, the first year that Pew found that more women than men were using social networking sites.

Factoring in both genders, the youngest demographic still remains the most likely to frequent social networking sites, with 83 percent of online Americans aged 18 to 29 saying they visit them. Seniors who use the Internet are the least likely to log into Facebook and similar sites—just 33 percent of those over 65 said they do so.

While Boomer-aged Internet users trailed those younger as social networking junkies, Pew did find that online adults aged 50 to 64 reported the biggest growth in daily use of social networking sites since last year’s survey, with 32 percent now saying they do so as compared with just 20 percent a year ago.

Overall, 43 percent of adult Americans who use the Internet go to social networking sites daily, meaning that the only other online activities Internet users do more are email, which 61 percent said they do daily, and search, which 59 percent reported doing daily. About 38 percent of online Americans said they were daily frequenters of social networking sites in last year’s poll, according to Pew, while just 13 percent were in 2008.

To put some more perspective on the staggering growth of social networking, Pew noted that in 2009, 46 percent of American Internet users said they’d been to a social networking site at least once in their lives, a percentage that was being fast approached in the latest poll by those who said they used those sites at least once on typical day.

The report also stated that researchers found “no significant differences in use of social networking sites based on race and ethnicity, household income, education level, or whether the internet user lives in an urban, suburban, or rural environment.”

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