There were tons of skeptics of Google+ from the get go. Their way of getting users was dubious at best. We don't know how many users were ever true active users vs people who signed up because of having a Google/Gmail account already and checking out Google+ once or twice. Or creating a Google+ account and never coming back or coming back accidentally. Those all still counted as active users. It isn't just hindsight. People including me were calling this from day one.
IG has grown around 45% in the past year. Snapchat has grown half that, close to 23%. IG is the more established social network and growing faster. That's the worry. Sheer numbers make it look so much worse. Snapchat added around 50M new MAUs over the past year. IG did over 4x that at over 200M.
I remember seeing charts similar to the one you posted and dismissing it as BS back then too. As did others. It's a vanity metric. Without knowing the engagement, it is mostly meaningless. And most signs pointed to there being weak actual engagement. Especially if you look past those user's first one or two enhancements of G+. Most prob never engaged again. The same can't be said for the others. FB's first 50M users were by and large engaged. All the others were too, to different degrees. All far above Google+'s.
IG has grown around 45% in the past year. Snapchat has grown half that, close to 23%. IG is the more established social network and growing faster. That's the worry. Sheer numbers make it look so much worse. Snapchat added around 50M new MAUs over the past year. IG did over 4x that at over 200M.
I remember seeing charts similar to the one you posted and dismissing it as BS back then too. As did others. It's a vanity metric. Without knowing the engagement, it is mostly meaningless. And most signs pointed to there being weak actual engagement. Especially if you look past those user's first one or two enhancements of G+. Most prob never engaged again. The same can't be said for the others. FB's first 50M users were by and large engaged. All the others were too, to different degrees. All far above Google+'s.