One of the few quantifiable (if anecdotal) comparisons of FB vs G+ I have seen. And a very unexpected result!

One of the few quantifiable (if anecdotal) comparisons of FB vs G+ I have seen. And a very unexpected result!

Originally shared by Wil Wheaton

Thanks to everyone who visited my blog yesterday, in my stupid “what kind of traffic comes to my blog” thing.

Here’s what I found out. Please note that this is profoundly unscientific and the margin of error is probably large.

Total traffic in about 24 hours:  ~24,689
Traffic from Facebook:  ~13,428
Traffic from G+: ~11,261

I expected the numbers to be vastly different, skewed heavily toward Facebook. I haven’t made much of an effort to link to my blog from G+, because I figured people tended to stay on G+, or come from Reader, if they come from Google at all. 

So, as far as I am concerned, G+ and Facebook are essentially the same for the purposes of “people come from there to read my blog.”

Interactions on Facebook:
Likes: 1118
Comments: 345
Shares: I have no idea. Facebook doesn’t make this easy to see.

G+: +1s (same as likes): 647
Comments: 247
Shares: 10

I don’t look at the likes and +1s as meaning "this is awesome" more than “I’m a person and I clicked on this thing.” A comment is a little more involved, because it takes a little more effort, so if I were giving value to things, I’d probably make a “like” or a “+1” worth maybe .8 of a comment (but that’s arbitrary, because I don’t really have a reason to assign relative values to those things.)

So here’s my conclusion: Based on my very limited sample size in a profoundly non-scientific study, there isn’t a significant difference between G+ and Facebook in terms of “people are interested enough to click on a thing”. Where there is a massive and significant difference is in on-site interaction, like commenting and upvoting things. In that regard, Facebook seems to have much more interaction. I think this is due to Facebook being around longer, and so many people using Facebook’s mobile apps for so long. 

What I take away from this is that G+ is not the deserted, burned out Detroit warehouse some tech writers portray it as being. In fact, it’s just the opposite of that (as far as I am concerned) because it’s still a very young social network in comparison to Facebook.

When I asked the question yesterday, I was sort of looking to find out if it was worth my effort to post things on G+ that refer back to my blog, or if I should just drop that and use it more for listening than broadcasting. Based on my tiny, unscientific sample, I’ll go ahead and share more things in the future on G+.

So thanks for giving me some useful data!

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