Google+ or Google-?: Examining the Popularity of the new OSN

In an era when Facebook and Twitter dominate the market for social media, Google has made another attempt to become a player by introducing Google+ (G+). This begs the question that "whether G+ can sustain a meaningful growth to become a relevant player in this market despite the dominance of Facebook and Twitter?". The conflicting reports on G+ mostly focus on high level statistics that do not offer a meaningful answer. To tackle this question, this paper presents a detailed measurement study to characterize the key features of G+. Our results suggest that the short-term growth of G+ during its first 10 months far outpaced other OSNs. However, we do not observe a bandwagon effect (characteristic of other popular OSNs) in the growth of active users who represent 10.3% of the whole population. Furthermore, only 43.5% of G+ users form the largest connected component that has connectivity features similar to other popular OSNs. Finally, despite the small fraction of users that frequently visit G+, the aggregate daily activity has increased over 50% due to the dramatic growth in the total population of users.