Let us take a look at some features that were removed or redesigned and obviously not popular with users:
Google+ Events, the ability to allow create and invite users to share photos and media in real time was removed from Google+ as part of the November 2015 redesign.
“Search in Google+” allowed users to search for content within Google+. Users type what they’re looking for into the Google+ search box, and Google will return relevant people and posts, as well as popular content from around the web. The search feature no longer appears on Google+, but Google+ content can be searched via the standard Google search engine.
“Messenger” (formerly: Huddle) is a feature available to Android, iPhone, and SMS devices for communicating through instant messaging within Circles. Additionally, users can share photos in Messenger between their Circles. This feature was removed in August 2013 since it is superseded by Hangouts.
“Games” had 16 games when G+ launched on August 11, 2011, which expanded to 44 a few months later, but by April 2013 there were 38 since some games were removed by the owner. Unlike Facebook games, Google+ games are located under a games tab, which gives games less visibility, and had separate notifications from the rest of a user’s notifications.]All games were removed from Google+ in June 2013.
Hangouts on Air, introduced in Sept 2011, the live streaming service was moved to YouTube Live starting September 12, 2016.
Ripples, introduced on October 27, 2011, was a visualization tool, showing how re-sharing activity happens regarding a public post. One could replay the public share’s activity, zoom in on certain events, identify top contributors, view statistics about average chain length, the most influential people in the chain, the language of the sharers, etc. The feature was removed in May 2015.
“Sparks” is a front-end to, enabling users to identify topics they might be interested in sharing with others. “Featured interests” sparks are also available, based on topics others globally are finding interesting. Sparks is accessed as a pull-down from search results and helps to keep users informed of the latest updates on the topics of their interest. Sparks was removed sometime in November 2012.
There is no lie admitting that assessments of Google+ growth have varied widely and little difficult because Google first defined the service as a social network, then later as “a social layer across all of Google’s services”, allowing them to share a user’s identity and interests. According to Ars Technica Google+ signups were “often just an incidental byproduct of signing up for other Google services.” Consequently, the reported number of active users on Google+ grew significantly, but the average time those users spent on the site were a small fraction of that on comparable social media services.
But user engagement on Google+ was low compared with its competitors. ComScore estimated that users averaged just 3.3 minutes on the site in January 2012, versus 7.5 hours for Facebook. In March 2013, average time spent on the site remained low: roughly 7 minutes, according to Nielsen, not including traffic via apps. In February 2014, The New York Times likened Google+ to a ghost town, citing Google stats of 540 million “monthly active users”, but noting that almost half don’t visit the site. The company replied that the significance of Google+ was less as a Facebook competitor than as a means of gathering and connecting user information from Google’s various services.
With these information, do you feel Google+ is not a relevant platform for businesses?
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