Hopes for the Analytics of Google+

I have a few questions I’d love to answer in any forthcoming Google+ Analytics package.

These include:

• What is the Recency-Frequency curve of viewing and posting for Google+ users?

• Can we accept or reject the Zuckerberg Hypothesis of List-Making?

• What are the characteristics of UGC content that is shared and plused the most often?

• What is the relationship between circle views, stream activity and UGC post frequency to those circles?

• What is the relationship between the number of those in a circle and post frequency?

• What is the average post frequency that results in somebody being booted from a circle and placed into a new circle (or deleted altogether for posting too hard)?

• Do Circles cause organic community of interest formation?

• What are the differences in content shared between/among circles? (Just how Janus-Faced are people?)

Circles are a social experiment on a grand scale. I want to understand how circles are used to moderate signal-to-noise ratios, cause variation in post frequency, self-censorship, and how it affects UGC generation and dissemination.

The answers have very important marketing ramifications. Circles enable a higher degree of consumer control. Consumers are empowered to generate slices of their world to both see and engage with.

Relevance and Divergence will matter more than ever on this platform.

I’m spending a lot of time trying to understand how a piece of physical technology changes social behavior. It’s a system. And I hope any Google+ analytics interface helps me understand that system to make better decisions.