Google Plus: Big With Status-Seeking Singles; Losing Ground At Colleges & Cafes

Aug 13, 2011 at 9:43am ET by Matt McGee

Conventional wisdom says that Google+ is big with the tech crowd and, more specifically, with males than females. But Experian Hitwise has a different way of looking at who’s using Google+. It doesn’t dispute the conventional wisdom, per se, but adds perhaps another perspective to the discussion.

In a blog post today, Bill Tancer uses the company’s “Mosaic” lifestyle segmentation system to conclude that the Google+ audience is expanding.

… in just over six weeks, we’ve moved from innovators to early adopters to early mainstream users visiting the new social network.

An accompanying chart shows that Google+ was initially a big hit with the “colleges and cafes” crowd (described as “young singles and recent college graduates living in college communities”), but that community is visiting Google+ less over the past month. (see red line below)

google-plus-hitwise

Meanwhile, the “Status Seeking Singles” segment adopted Google+ early (green line above) and continues to make up a large part of the userbase now, along with a group that Experian Hitwise calls “Kids and Cabernet.” The latter segment is described as “prosperous, middle-aged married couples living child-focused lives in affluent suburbs.” (dark blue line above)

Experian suggests that this “Kids and Cabernet” group is the first sign of Google+ adoption beyond innovators and early adopters and that watching the future migration of other lifestyle segments will help indicate if Google+ will become a legitimate Facebook competitor.

And what remains to be seen in the immediate future is if this week’s launch of games on Google+ has any impact on the types of people that visit the site consistently.

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Google: Google+ | Stats: Hitwise | Top News

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

Connect with the author via: Email | Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn

Read before commenting! We welcome constructive comments and allow any that meet our common sense criteria. This means being respectful and polite to others. It means providing helpful information that contributes to a story or discussion. It means leaving links only that substantially add further to a discussion. Comments using foul language, being disrespectful to others or otherwise violating what we believe are common sense standards of discussion will be deleted. Comments may also be removed if they are posted from anonymous accounts. You can read more about our comments policy here.

http://www.michael-martinez.com/ Michael Martinez

2 out of 4 lines are trending downward.
http://sophistefunk.com Gregory Ciotti

I wonder why there was such a huge drop with college aged people?
http://futuretomorrow.net Steve Joseph

@Gregory – it’s possible to reason that most of their friends might not be using Google+ and from my own use I really don’t tend to see a lot of young College kids using the platform. The allure they still seek is on Facebook.
tony cerda

Very interesting! More guys use G+ than females. More guys are color blind than females. I wonder which lines above were red and which ones were green?

O.o
http://www.michael-martinez.com/ Michael Martinez

I went all week without using Google+ this week. Haven’t missed it. Adding GAMES to the service sure didn’t make me want to use it again….
http://hauntingthunder.wordpress.com/ Maurice Walshe

so “Kids and Cabernet” group – which demographic do we think SEO’s fall into :-)
http://plusforgoogle.com naz d’aboville

Real informative article – People keep saying that Google+ is for suburban parents and things like that and though i agree it is parent friendly – i think people need to look more closely at the mixture on google+ and why it’s features – more importantly themes are beneficial to a huge audience – wrote an article on the subject called “Google+., The Suburbs … And My Mum” – http://plusforgoogle.com/2011/08/15/the-suburbs-google-and-my-mum/
http://www.pinupbot.com PUB

Google Plus fails on so many levels.

First it’s a copy of facebook with circles instead of lists.

Second, they put a no pseudonyms policy into play and started suspending accounts – even those with legitimate names that sounded otherwise.

Third Eric Schmidt says G+ is “primarily an identity service” (not a social network)

I mean this is or was supposed to be a social network – not a job application where people have to have their real wallet names on their public profile or else. Google + won’t be around 1 year or even 6 months from today. Huge failure. In my opinion they should stick to search so I can find people on facebook.