Google+ grows 43% in June
Wow. Lots of impressions here.<p>MySpace is so small now! And shrinking! Let us never forget that history.<p>Tumblr and pinterest are adding a lot fewer users than I thought.<p>Gosh just look at the page. Google+ looks very clean and beautiful compared to Facebook these days. I'm reminded of when everybody used to say "Facebook looks very clean and beautiful compared to MySpace these days".<p>Google has a big leg up here as Google+ ads can always be less intrusive and more relevant than Facebook ones. They can also afford to be cleaner by simply not making much (if any) money off of Google+ itself, just on the fact that it gets you into the google ecosystem.<p>One thing that really bothers me about new Google web properties is that Google made this browser, Google Chrome, with a search functionality that highlights the matched words in orange on the scrollbar. Then they went and broke this feature on every single scrollbar possible by using custom scrollbars on every Google web property except Google search itself. How silly!<p>---<p>Back to the topic at hand. I love the format of Google+ compared to Facebook. It sits between blog and social network, and long-form posts and answers seem much more natural and acceptable on G+ than on Facebook.<p>Think about it. <i>Lots of people link to Google+ posts here.</i> Nobody links to the equivalent Facebook thing, wall posts. (And extremely few people use Facebook "notes" which were an attempt to fill that gap and have falled by the wayside.) I think this is one of the most telling things of all.<p>I think Google+ has great opportunity for it to mature into more than just a social network, but a social network + blog  for those who cant be bothered to make (and visit!) traditional blogs + interactive press release platform (important for both companies and users).<p>I don't know if G+ will "win" any long term battle, but I do hope that when social networks mature into more refined, less annoying versions of themselves, they will look more like G+ than like Facebook or MySpace. I think the trend is clear, anyway.