14 DAY TRIAL // Google+ has been going great, if you listen to Google, it's always adding new users and growing in the metrics "that matter," to Google at least. In the metric that seems to be the most important, engagement, Google+ is fluttering. Of course, saying that something is doomed is even more enticing than saying something is the greatest invention since the dawn of time, though the truth is mostly somewhere in the middle.
Still, some newer data indicates that engagement is rather poor on Google+ and that most people rarely share something publicly and even if they do it once they're not likely to do it again.
Granted, this was said of Twitter for many years, and still is, so even if the data is accurate, it only tells part of the story.
RJ Metrics sampled 40,000 Google+ users, at random and then based its stats on the publicly available data. Of those 40,000, only a third had ever published something publicly.
That's not to say they're inactive on the site, it could be that they're not particularly keen on sharing anything with the world.
Of those that did share things publicly, 30 percent never got past the first post. They either continued to post stuff only visible to their circles or nothing at all.
Even those that made five public posts were not guaranteed to return, 15 never posted anything publicly again.
Users don't post that often either, even the ones that do it from time to time, they wait on average 12 days between new posts. And it continues like this, the number of posts per month drops slowly month after month, showing that users post less and less stuff in time.
Engagement with the posts is equally appalling, they're +1'ed on average 0.77 times and only get 0.54 replies. That's to say that at least half the posts never get any replies, but it's probably worse than that as some posts may get a lot of comments while the most get none.