July 20, 2011

During a demo to the Orange County chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, I lived dangerously by conducting an experiment. I posted the picture you see below with this text “I will give a copy of Enchantment to the first person who figures out what this picture symbolizes…ie, a word game.” to four services:

• Twitter @GuyKawasaki
• Facebook fan page, Enchantment
• Facebook fan page, GuyKawasaki
• Google+ GuyKawasaki

I made the posts at 8:16 p.m. Pacific on Thursday, July 14th. At the time, the accounts had these amounts of followers and garnerned these amounts of comments in three hours:

• Twitter: 377,748 followers; 45 comments
• Facebook fan page, Guy Kawasaki: 54,884 followers; 97 comments
• Facebook fan page, Enchantment: 26,971 fans; 94 comments
• Google+: 10,000 followers (near as I can guess—Google+ is a little sketchy about numbers); 105 comments

I’m not a scientist or statistician, but I tried to control as many variables as possible: almost identical text (the tweet had slightly less text to fit the 140-character limit), same time and same picture. My methodology isn’t pure, but I’m not trying to be a scientist. I’m just a marketing guy trying to figure out if Google+ is a useful platform.

One data point is to calculate the ratio of the number of followers per comment, by dividing the number of followers by the number of comments:

• Twitter: 8,394 followers/comment
• Facebook: 566 followers/comment
• Facebook: 287 followers/comment
• Google+: 95 followers/comment

It sure looks like Google+ followers generate far more comments than Twitter or Facebook. I can think of several reasons for this:

• Current Google+ members are geeks who are most likely to know me and comment on my posts. If/when Google+ reaches mainstream users, then the ratio of followers to comments will increase.

• I behave differently on Google+ by providing more personal interaction, so this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I get more comments on the service.

• The number of followers/fans on the services are inaccurate.

• Even if the number of users is accurate, someone who started following me on Twitter three years ago may be less likely to comment (for one thing, someone who followed me long ago may not even be active on the service anymore) than someone who just started following me on Google+ in the last two weeks.

• Google+ fosters more engagement for whatever magical and unforeseen reason.

It’s not like you’re betting the farm on two guys/gals in a garage—it’s Google for crying out loud, so give Google+ a shot and see how it works for you. Early acceptance has been great, but this is the geek lunatic fringe. It’s not clear that Google+ will “cross the chasm” as Geoffrey Moore would say, but I’m a believer. You can follow me here. It’s where you will find my most personal, handcrafted social-media efforts. And by the way, the response I was looking for the picture was Holy (cross) Shiitake (mushrooms). Get it?

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Join the conversation ( 22 )

• Yasha Harari 9 months ago

  

  These numbers are in line with my own experience across the socnets.

• The Habit Factor® 10 months ago

  

  interesting but not magic... and really not surprising at this pt.... google+ users are very limited at the moment (beta). likely to be highly engaged / active...these are beta/active users for now.... try that experiment when google+ is OLD news - say 22 months from now and see how the numbers compare..

• Rob Wag 10 months ago

  

  Also, there is less noise on G+. Once the users stream is loaded with msgs Google needs to generate an algorythm which decides about displayed G+ updates.

• snekse 10 months ago

  

  Two other possibilities:* Most people are following fewer people on G+ right now, so they are more likely to see your content than they are on other services where they might be following 500+ active users.* G+ has a lot of people's attention right now at the cost of other services.Another thing to think about is why do comments seem to cap at 100? My guess is people see the comment count and figure whatever they have to say is either not going to be seen or has already been said.

• DaveRogers 10 months ago

  

  Well the early going consists as you say of hyper-geek types. Those of course would me more likely to jump on a "Guy Kawasaki" posting than the masses of Twitter followers who jumped on the band wagon later.My suspicions are that you and Chris Brogan are right about Google +. Time will tell.

• Cristiana Rodrigues 10 months ago

  

  Considering the amount of gmail I got after I commented one of your posts Id say your analysis is not that far off. (and I had commented on you Facebook pages before)

• Susan Vincent 10 months ago

  

  It's also possible that because G+ is smaller, the post doesn't get lost in the clutter like twitter or fb. I know that I only see 1/5 of the things that are tweeted by the people I'm following because it's so crowded (and if I miss it in realtime, the only way I'll make the effort to go back and find it later is if other people are referring to it). Will be interesting to see if G+ maintains advantage as more people get on.

• Mary Beth Stockdale 10 months ago

  

  Google+ is still a shiny new toy...

• Lee Crawfurd 10 months ago

  

  Fancy doing an experiment with a Yale professor who likes to do experiments?Lee@rovingbandit

• Louis St-Amour 10 months ago

  

  I think the main difference is offering a comment box, as well as a great presentation of the photos. And I feel more comfortable posting on other people's posts in Google+ given that it's not on "their wall" in the same way.

• Walid Muhammad 10 months ago

  

  I like the experiment. I can see great potential in G+, it's easy to use and the conversations flow in a much more engaging manner than twitter and FB.

• Sabina Siddiqi 10 months ago

  

  I think having fewer followers on google+ is also an indicator that at the moment there aren't that many people on google+ and therefore there are fewer posts which increases the probability of people noticing your post and commenting on it!

  • Guy Kawasaki 10 months ago

    

    Good point!

  • Brad Yzermans 10 months ago

    

    I think you hit the nail on the head.......people who follow thousands of people on Twitter or any other platform cannot see that many posts. And just because you follow someone doesn't mean actually read what they tweet or post. Plus, there is only a tiny segment of the population who actually stare at social media feeds/platforms all day. We are in a vacuum. Most people actually work without a computer or have access to internet at work.

• Csaba Hurton 10 months ago

  

  Interesting findings - though I put one more thing into the possible reasons for the phenomenon: more comments might come for a Google+ post because people get much less posts on their streams so there are not many things to comment on on G+.

• Brent Williams 10 months ago

  

  Once again, incredibly astute observations...not to mention the gutz to run the experiment live in front of a crowd. Nice work.

  • Guy Kawasaki 10 months ago

    

    Glad that you liked it. Not gutz, no followers I always say....

• Angela Hausman 10 months ago

  

  I've been struggling with the notion of engagement. I noticed you used the word interaction in promoting this post on G+ and Facebook, but engagement in the actual content. Is there a difference? What do they mean? I posted this on G+, Facebook, and Twitter and received various responses that don't seem to really nail down a definition. While this may seem trivial, how do you get engagement if you don't even know what it is? Please join the conversation at: http://hausmanmarketresearch.org/what-is-engagement-in-social-media. I'd love to hear other ideas for a paper I'm working on for the Journal of Marketing.Angela Hausman, PhDHoward University

  • Guy Kawasaki 10 months ago

    

    Interaction = casual conversationEngagement = clicking on my linksEnchantment = buying my book :-)

• Eli Kozin 10 months ago

  

  2 additional confounding reasons:1. Google+ is still a new platform and everyone is still trying to figure out exactly what it will look like and how they will use it. Because of this nascent nature, users are more likely to experiment, try new things, and have lower overall social media inhibitions. Then again, tendency towards this behavior is partially the result of the type of people that self-select as early adopters.2. Removing the top row of mushrooms makes the rest of the picture look like a + sign. I don't know how users responded to the challenge, but G+ users are more likely to identify with a + sign than Twitter or Facebook users.

• Sarah E. Harper 10 months ago

  

  Thanks for sharing! This has motivated me pay more attention to my Google+. I saw the picture on Twitter & did not answer, I couldn't tell what it was! I vote for "all of the above" for the reasons why Google+ generated more comments.

• MedRevise.co.uk 10 months ago

  

  I think the big point you've missed there - People are new on G+, actively trying to engage with it whilst they work out if it can work. Someone posting anything on G+ is still relatively new to me - so I'm much more likely to comment on it than I would on facebook.FYI, I came to this article through twitter, hehe