Google+ now equivalent to Android in 2009?

One of the news items I read today was about the estimation that Google+ now has 62 million users. Considering it was about 40 million in October, this number looks about right. This may make it the fastest growing social network ever, but its still a david to the goliath that is Facebook.

One of the things that the post mentions is the network effect - that as more people use it, its inherent value increases as a social network, hence it will add users at greater speed. That means that growth will be "super linear", the visualization of which is sometimes called the hockey stick graph. Now, where have I seen such a graph before...

Android, of course! Android was a relatively slow starter. This changed soon, though, and due to the huge marketing that went with the first Verizon Droid, and the availability of android phones from many manufacturers for all carriers, it got a strong kick. It may or may not have been the best phone OS, but it provided different things to different people - they were available with or without physical keyboards, small and big, cheap or expensive etc.

How does this all relate to Google+? Because the biggest reason for Android's hockey stick growth is the same as is being predicted for Google+. The reason is that increasing usage drives even more adoption. People see their friends using Androids and buy them. Manufacturers and carriers put more effort into their range, developing better quality phones with a wider range of features and specifications. And most importantly, developers consider it an important platform to support.

Of course, all this growth must be supported by real development and innovation in the platform. It is clear that Android has shown that - the UI has improved with every new release, its implementation of notifications and multitasking cannot be beaten, its the only platform that supports the new 4G networks, and the only real supporter of third party innovation like in the form of amazing Swype and SwiftKeyX keyboards. Google+, one can argue, is following this trend - Hangouts keeps adding interesting new features, Google+ search is amazing, and I really like the privacy model which prevents me from reading all the spam (updates not meant for me) at Facebook. Every new improvement to Google+ will pull in more users, and some day its usage will reach critical mass, after which its hockey stick growth is all but guaranteed.

Chromebook silently successful?

I was looking at amazon.com today to look for a laptop, and saw that Acer's chromebook is actually at number 5 in the bestseller's list. Its a pretty surprising find because I remember when the Samsung's chromebook was launched, it was universally panned by reviewers and media (save engadget). If you search for a chromebook, you will see that all of them are rated a solid 4 stars.

Why is that the media reacted so different from actual users? The biggest argument that media had against chromebook was that for the same price you could buy a windows netbook which could do so much more. But it seems actual users are not looking to do so much more. Connectivity requirement was a big negative. But we are almost always connected. Most reviews of the chromebook laud its ease of use. They say that it may not replace someone's primary computer, but 90% of the use case is just using the internet for which it works very well. With decent hardware and good battery life, to me it all seems like a recipe for success.

Media inconsistent in their reviews?

When you look at the mobile rivalry between iOS and Android, the blogosphere generally tends to favour iOS, citing ease of use being more important than sheer number of features. Why is it, then, that in the case of chromebook ease of use and less features is a worse combination than a more complicated interface and more features? Frankly, I don't know. It maybe the case that most tech writers use a lot of windows or mac software, which obviously don't have any chrome OS equivalents, and therefore couldn't imagine themselves using them. But then, reviewers should be able to put themselves in the shoes of potential users when reviewing the product and not just use their own profile to judge a product.

Whatever the reason, it seems like media can't predict every trend. And when buying something for yourself, it always pays to do some work yourself to know if the product fits your needs.