One-Third of Google Workers Shun Posting in Google+ in a Month

While the role of Facebook and Twitter in helping elect and celebrate the Wednesday poll victory of U.S. President Barack Obama has once more been emphasised, the newbie social networking site Google+ appears quiet and out of the political equation.

In fact, the site, owned by the largest search engine Google, appears to be too quiet even for Google's own employees.

Proof of the lack of popularity of Google+ in comparison to Facebook and Twitter, besides its membership numbers, is a study by newly launched Web site Google Plus Ghosts which aims to track how active are the social networking site's members on Google+.

The portal found at almost one-third of Google employees have not updated their profiles or posted in Google+ the past month, while one-fifth were inactive for the past three months and one-eighth inactive the past six months.

Google Plus Ghosts acknowledged that the basis of their analysis is the public posts of over 2,000 users who indicated on Google+'s profile pages that they are employees of the largest search engine.

A Google+ spokesman pointed out that the new Web site failed to consider the private updates of its employees.

However, Yousaf Sekander, who conceptualized Google Plus Ghosts to track URL sharing, said the analysis is an indicator that even among the search engine's staff, Google+ is not that popular.

"Employee engagement on Google+ is discouragingly low. If Google employees can't even muster enough enthusiasm to log onto their social network every once in a while, what hope is there for ordinary users?" The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Mr Sekander.

Google claims it social networking site has 100 million active monthly users out of the total 400 million members, but several studies question how active Google+ users are in comparison to Facebook members who are seven times more active and Twitter users who are 33 times more active.

There are speculations that given the continuous popularity of Facebook and Twitter, the one-year-old Google+ may go the way of older social networking sites such as Friendster and Multiply whose numbers have significantly been reduced from its millions of members just a few years ago.