Google on the defensive about new data

Despite a new report that suggests Google+ is seemingly loosing the race in social networking, the company continues to stand by their product.

New comScore Inc. data shows that users are not all that fond of the network, spending on average just three minutes per month on the site.  

Meanwhile, social network rivals Facebook seem to be grabbing more of users attention as they spend an average seven hours per month on the site, says the report.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, a Google spokeswoman said comScore’s data is “dramatically lower” than Google’s internal data. 

Google vice-president Bradley Horowitz would not reveal Google’s data about how much time people spend on Google+, but did tell the Wall Street Journal, “we’re growing by every metric we care about.”

As Todd Wasserman points out, Google is claiming the comScore Inc. data is inaccurate due its inability to track users who access Google+ remotely.

On this note, Horowitz was quoted telling The Wall Street Journal that, “it is extremely hard for any third party to measure (Google+).” 

Why? 

Because according to Horowitz, the social media site is designed to be more of an auxiliary to other Google services including YouTube and Gmail. 

He also said Google+ is  meant to add a “personal,”  layer on top of the already existing services. This way, Google+ users searching on Google will get personal results that use content from Google+, according to The Journal article.

Just last month, Google CEO Larry Page announced Google+ had 90 million users globally. 

Page also announced that Google reported revenues of $10.58 billion for the quarter ending December 31, 2011.

Do you think Google can compete with Facebook for social networking?

As a company social media strategy, would you prefer to use Google+ or Facebook? Is your Edmonton business currently on either social networking site?

By Jasmine Franklin @JasFranklin09