Google Trends for Tumblr, Google+, Reddit, Twitter
google.comI was wondering why you didn't include and so I plunked it in there and then realized why you didn't include facebook: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F05pdgbz%2C%20...
Tried it with Instagram instead of Facebook. Also pretty interesting. https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F05pdgbz%2C%20...
I did the same thing. It sort of takes one's breath away.
What I find interesting is that Twitter and Facebook have the same graph shape, both peaking in 2013.
They should allow a log scale, then you could compare with Facebook more easily.
My fairly crude theory is that those sites have slightly broader and thus less tech-savvy userbases, so searches might represent ingrained ways of accessing the site more than they would for Reddit or Tumblr.
As even the least-tech-savvy becomes more aware of faster ways of accessing the websites, and browser software starts to pre-empt user intention more and more, this kind of convoluted search starts to drop off.
Not sure if that theory holds water, or is in any way necessary.
I agree with your theory to an extent, however:
> As even the least-tech-savvy becomes more aware of faster ways of accessing the websites
I'm not sure that happens. From observation, people tend to stick to the first way they figured out how to do something on their computer. Searching for "Facebook" from Google is very standard practice. Further, browsers _encourage_ search over direct address input. I've tried to show people many times how to visit sites directly... it doesn't help them so they understandably ignore the advice.
Also, Google stopped indexing Twitter around the time Twitter started to decline, but Facebook still comes up first for many name searches.
It's the impact of mobile.
As a side note, I really enjoy seeing Google Trends information. I really hope this is one Google dont take from us.
And I'd love Google to build on their Public Data explorer. There is so much need and value for a business and the wider public for a central data repository that has good cutting and display options. And a business could easily pay for a private corner to link to these data sets. If this Public Data tool had been a bit further ahead I suspect it could have taken a chunk the massively growing space now being filled by Tableau and other BI solutions.
A side note on Google Trends: you can't use Google Trends as statistical evidence that a startup is doing better than another because there are hundreds of different reasons why people might Google a startup, and some might be more biased than others. (e.g. Googling "what the heck is Reddit" which might be less likely to happen for Facebook, yet is not fully indicative of business success/failure).
It's still fun for making silly correlations, though.
Why not?
Interesting to see Snapchat and Instagram in there: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F05pdgbz%2C%20...
swap Twitter for Pinterest: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F05pdgbz%2C%20...
Snapchat don't really have a web client though
True, but that means that people will Google it more, especially because their website intentionally has very little information about the service.
Adding Facebook on the other hand is not that interesting :D
As much as we like to say bad things about Marissa Mayer (I don't know her in person so she might be truly awful in person I don't know) but she might have made the right call in buying Tumblr. I think Tumblr still has value. When the teens who use tumblr today become older, there might even be some emotional/sentimental value in Tumblr for them.
Traffic at Tumblr's age means nothing if you can't monetize it.
Yahoo included it in a $4.5B markdown on it a couple months ago. http://qz.com/608497/yahoo-just-admitted-it-badly-overpaid-f...
> The value of Tumblr’s tangible and intangible assets amounted to just $353 million, according to Yahoo’s accounting. Tumblr also had $114 million in liabilities.
Tumblr got to where Twitter wanted to be before Twitter did. By the Twitter figured it out they've been on the decline since. But Tumblr is a really bad buy.
Tumblr has three phases, the gen Y (25-35 yo) has already cycled out and the gen Z (15-25 yo) are on it because it's not Twitter and not Facebook. It will decline just like Myspace boomed then declined.
Drop Instagram and WhatsApp in there and they're the best buys.
What's more interesting is how Reddit came to be the new Craigslist for both gen Y and gen Z.
Oh, try putting in Snapchat. Since Snapchat only has dark content they're not shown to be any bigger than Reddit although I peg them at maybe half the growth rate of Instagram.
Wait it out another two product cycles and they'll sharing clear content, then maybe we can finally see if the Facebook vs Snapchat duel is really real.
I think you have a very fundamental misunderstanding about each of these networks and how they're used.
Your conclusions don't match with how people use these products and I say this as an avid user of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit.
For example, to describe Reddit as the new Craigslist is completely off base. Reddit is the new Vbulletin forum software. Reddit is where vast and varying communities form around different topics and they all happen to have the same format but that's all that they share in common.
I don't think you're right about Twitter. Twitter is a real time information company, more or less. No journalists or news savvy people to to Tumblr for content. There is value in having live content coming from "content creators" than in cases like Tumblr where most of the content is not original at all. Twitter doesn't know it's own value because it's poorly run, but I don't think they ever wanted to be like Tumblr.
I think they want to be more appealing to casuals and are willing to sacrifice their core users at the altar of a timeline that is not a simple reverse chronological but tries to guess what you likely like reading.
> When the teens who use tumblr today become older, there might even be some emotional/sentimental value in Tumblr for them.
Would it not be in danger of becoming something like LiveJournal? Where the users are an ever narrower segment of a slightly older demographic group, with no growth.
I was curious about the downward trend in Twitter and Facebook at about the same time. I nknow it doesn't imply causation, but adding "Snowden" shows the downward trend for Twitter begins about the same time. It is hard to see for Facebook because it trends so highly, but its downward trend is around the same time.
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0289n8t%2C%20...
Perhaps there is indeed hope that a generation of people are becoming more aware of their options with regards to privacy and anonymity online.
Or perhaps it can more accurately be attributed to a switch to Snapchat or other social media providers.
I think it has more to do with the switch from the web (where people search rather than type the address) to apps (where people arrive via notification or app icon)
The uptake for Twitter searching in 2013 is more likely related to the media speculation around their 2013 IPO: http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/company/twitter-inc-76392...
Ok, but let's not forget that half of internet is not there. E.g. Chinese people do not use Google. If we could agregate data qq.com could very well be above them all.
I went exploring the Chinese half of the internet for a while. It's amazing how different things are there, yet how similar they are.
Baidu seems essentially equivalent to Google, AliPay to PayPal and Weibo to Facebook.
As for differences, I noticed were how heavily integrated AliPay (and all the payment methods) were with the regular Chinese banking system, needing a local bank card to verify any account.
Also interesting how they handled file sharing. Baidu Pan seems to be the Chinese alternative to torrents or P2P.
Really though, the biggest take away I got was the inconceivable amount of information that isn't displayed to Westerners in search. The Chinese internet, with over 700m users, must be enormous but your average Western internet user doesn't see any of it.
Interesting, I'd love to read more about it! What's this Baidu Pan thing?
Baidu Pan is a kind of online MFS, a distributed file system. It is very convenient inside China for "instant torrenting": if the file you want is already in the cloud you get it instantly. Also, it's free, you get 500G for $0 IIRC.
I like the growth chart for Reddit alone:
Me too. Looks like sustainable growth. Reddit is basically a centralized Usenet, which is a good thing - interaction from people all over the world who don't know each other for the sake of knowledge sharing and discussion. And NSFW stuff.
Personal anecdote: I will google "<person> Twitter" to get their Twitter feed so I wonder how many of those searches are not necessarily interest in the service rather interest in a specific person using the service.
It is probably telling that you don't, for example, often search "<person> Google+" to see what they're up to.
For Google's "trend" purposes, I'm fairly certain this counts as interest in the service, no? Why would it not?
Since they have separate entries for Twitter and the others, listed as "Social network" vs. just simply "search term" this has to imply some difference in what they include as searches.
So perhaps all permutations of searching for things on Twitter, and others, are lumped into the main search term.
Definitely!! I just used my personal anecdote to say that my "interest" is rarely with the service it is with the people using the service.
I would think that more than half of those searches are navigational.
It's also fun to do this with:
* Git vs. Mecurial vs. Subversion
* Slashdot vs. Hacker News
* GitHub vs. SourceForce
Interesting. I feel like you get Google search results for Tumblr, Reddit, and Twitter when you accidentally type in one of those as a search term instead of a URL. (Happens to the best of us, pretty sure I've searched for "Google" before.)
Google+ is different in that the URL is plus.google.com, so I think "plus" would be the misfire in that case.
Interested to know how Twitter let their momentum tail off starting mid-2013. Does anyone know the missteps?
Facebook executed very well on mobile after their post-IPO slump, while Twitter failed to create an easy onboarding experience that would enable them to move beyond their early adopters (the tech industry, the media industry, and celebrities). The Twitter executives were too busy squabbling to move the product forward (see the book Hatching Twitter).
How Facebook Squashed Twitter: https://stratechery.com/2016/how-facebook-squashed-twitter/
The Reality of Missing Out: https://stratechery.com/2016/the-reality-of-missing-out/
The purpose it was made for has become irrelevant. Everybody got smart phones, so the SMS character limit became moot, as well as the need for a lightweight interface. Everybody got Facebook, which satisfies all the text based posts people make. Everybody also got instagram, which is a much better image platform than twitter could hope to be.
The exception to all this is Twitter bots (but not MS' Tay), which are probably the most entertaining, unique, and valuable accounts that could not be mirrored on another site with the same effectiveness.
They did not make many missteps. Once the general public started using Twitter by 2013, they realized it's not for them, unless they were a celebrity.
Poor google plus.
I used to be a really loyal fan.
It looks pinterest really stalled. I wonder what their valuation is now.
The reddit spike in 2014 September. Was that that the leaked celebs photos?
Yup, it inflated the trending stats of a number of sites.
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=4chan%2C%20reddit%2C...
I never really understood what made these pictures so much more valuable than another official and unofficial nude images of celebrities. It had a profound effect on the sites linked above, though, from administration to the mentality of regulars.
Put Instagram in that search for some context and a look at serious growth.
It's interesting Dropbox doesn't enter these trend discussions. It flies under the radar.