A recent Bloomberg/YouGov survey took a look at the current state of social media trends and attempts to measure the growth of the new Google+ social network as well as its impact on other social networks. Google+ is already the fastest growing social network in history, and this survey finds that Google+ is on track to become the second largest social network within one year: passing LinkedIn and Twitter to take second place behind Facebook.
Head of YouGov Investment Products Michael Nardis said:
Google+ is starting off extremely strong. It’s chipping away at engagement levels on Facebook and Twitter. With Google reporting 25 million accounts already and an estimated 16MM more US adults reporting that they plan to join over the coming year, Google+ can be a threat to both.
Demographics
The survey found that the demographics of Google+ users are very similar to the initial users of other social networks such as Facebook during their growth phase: primarily younger early adopters of technology.
Compared to Facebook now, Google+ users are younger, more educated, more single, and more male, with a 3 to 2 men to women ratio, compared to a 1 to 1.2 male to female ratio on Facebook.
Google+ users are also very engaged, with 45% reporting reading content at least once a day and 46% creatin content at least once a week.
Google+ was also found to have a relatively high abandonment rate — a measurement of users who created a profile and have not yet created any content (made a post) or left entirely, so it’s not all glowing news for Google+. However in general the survey finds that Google+ is just getting started and will start toppling social network competitors over the next 12 months — and the study specifically notes that Google+ will negatively impact social rivals Twitter and Facebook, with 30% of Google+ users reporting that they plan to reduce their use of Facebook.