Four Reasons Google+ Keeps Growing Despite Critics

Despite a drumbeat of criticism that Google‘s social network, Google+, isn’t going anywhere, it appears that users aren’t paying attention. According to Paul Allen, a researcher who creates Facebook apps, Google+ growth isactually accelerating. That’s despite a series of small missteps (most recentlybanning a photo bearing a middle finger, for pete’s sake), the service continues to gain traction. Allen predicts that Google+ will have 400 million users–half of Facebook’s current total–by the end of 2012.

While some people seem surprised, or remain doubtful, they shouldn’t be. Here’s why Google+ is doing better than expected:

It’s Google, stupid: The company can promote the service not only on its search engine, but also on Gmail and all its other services, where you can see the Google+ tab at the top left of every page. If that sounds rather Microsoftian, it is, but it works.

Google+ looks pretty darn good: I haven’t yet opted into Facebook’s new Timeline (and neither have a lot of other people, near as I can tell), but for now, Google+ has a cleaner look and feel: more white space, larger type, bigger photos. Somehow when I post an article or photo there, it seems more substantial, even if it’s not.

You can engage in immediate, live conversation with people on a particular post: I admit I don’t use Hangouts much at all, but it’s amazingly easy to create or join a real-time conversation in a way you can’t do so seamlessly on Facebook.

It’s easier to connect with someone than on Facebook: Of course, I realize it’s just as easy to accept a friendship proposal on Facebook as it is to add someone on Google+. But what I mean is that Google+, like Twitter, allows you to follow someone without having to think too much about the privacy implications that by now are inescapable on Facebook. That removes a lot of friction to Google+’s growth.

Of course, all this means that Google+ isn’t the same as Facebook. But that’s the point. Facebook is Facebook, and most people don’t really need another with a different, more colorful logo. What Google+ ultimately offers in the way of a fully differentiated service remains to be seen, but as a content sharing medium, it works well. And that’s more than good enough to get a lot of people interested in trying it out.

None of this indicates whether people are actually using Google+ regularly, and it’s a pretty sure bet that most of those 60 million-plus aren’t going there every day as many people do on Facebook. In fact, even MySpace–remember them?–still gets more regular traffic than Google+.

That may not matter. Google doesn’t necessarily need to grow its social network to Facebook size to get enormous value from the data millions of users produce on their interests and even their purchasing intent. But to create a long-term sustainable service, it will have to find more ways to get people to come back every day.