Depending what metrics you look at, Google+ is either a fast-growing, promising newcomer to the social scene, or at best an also-ran. On one side, in January Google CEO Larry Page said Google+
had attracted 90 million registered users, up from 40 million in the first half of October -- and it may have doubled again since then. On the other side, comScore data (also from January) showed
that PC users who visited Google+ spent an average of three minutes per month on the site from September to January.
But what about mobile users? It turns out Google+’s unexpected
sweet spot may be in mobile social traffic, with growing strength in mobile content sharing, according to the latest “BoomBox Report” from Myxer, based on a survey of 1,022 Myxer mobile
users (admittedly a rather self-selecting survey panel).
The Myxer survey found that 10% of respondents use Google+ to share content from their mobile phones including images, video, and
music. That’s not a huge number, especially compared to 42% for Facebook and 37% for SMS, but it’s a lot more than you might expect based on the PC time spent figures cited above --
even more so when you consider that Twitter, a far more “established” social platform which would seem idea for mobile social activity, was used by just 2% of respondents for this kind
of content sharing. Google+ was also more popular than email, at 5%.
Indeed, it seems that Google+ may be more popular for mobile devise than it is for the Web: when Myxer mobile
users were asked how they access their favorite, social networks, 46% said they use Google+ on mobile more than on the Web. That compares to 51% for Facebook and 24% for Twitter.