{"id":137290,"date":"2018-10-09T18:49:53","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T00:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/10\/09\/percentages-are-useful-sometimes-theyre-not.html"},"modified":"2018-10-09T18:49:53","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T00:49:53","slug":"percentages-are-useful-sometimes-theyre-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/10\/09\/percentages-are-useful-sometimes-theyre-not.html","title":{"rendered":"Percentages are useful. Sometimes they're not"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of what's being constantly quoted around the Google+ shutdown is the stat, from Google, that 90% of G+ sessions last for fewer than five seconds. This low level of engagement is used by Google to justify yoinking the service.<\/p>\n

But what does that statistic really mean?<\/p>\n

First off … 90% of what?<\/i> What are the actual numbers here? 10% of a huge number is still pretty big.<\/p>\n

Second, what's the distribution? If it's "90% are under five seconds, 1% are 5-30 seconds, and 9% are 30 seconds to five hours," then that's interesting in and of itself.<\/p>\n

Third, who comes to G+ for just five seconds? It's not that people follow an interesting link and immediately draw back in horror at the site. These sound like typos, or poorly placed\/spaced icons. People are immediately leaving because they didn't intend<\/i> to come here in the first place.<\/p>\n

To me, the real question is, did someone glean that number (I presume authentic) because it intentionally looked bad, as an excuse for Google to take down it's consumer (public-facing) network? G+ can't be cheap to run, but beyond that, with GDPR now levying multi-billion dollar fines for stuff, Google may have decided it just wasn't worth the cost of maintaining that exposure without a revenue stream, regardless<\/i> of whether the usage numbers were high or low.<\/p>\n

I just wish we'd hear that<\/i> story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n
\n<\/a>\u00a0\n<\/div>\n

Original Post<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of what's being constantly quoted around the Google+ shutdown is the stat, from Google, that 90% of G+ sessions last for fewer than five seconds. This low level of engagement is used by Google to justify yoinking the service. But what does that statistic really mean? First off … 90% of what? What are … Continue reading “Percentages are useful. Sometimes they're not”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plusposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/google_plus_25B15D.jpgimgmax=660.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12490,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/04\/16\/final_frontier.html","url_meta":{"origin":137290,"position":0},"title":"Final Frontier?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 16-Apr-08 9:14am","format":false,"excerpt":"And let me tell you that hearing that the airline you flew out on (and, presumably, will fly back on) has Google News is always good for a few seconds...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31268,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/07\/the-five-stages-of-fox-news-grief.html","url_meta":{"origin":137290,"position":1},"title":"The Five Stages of Fox News Grief","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 7-Nov-12 11:36am","format":false,"excerpt":"While I sympathize with the, like, normal people I know who are\u00a0unhappy with last night's results, I have no such sympathy for the Fox News team. \u00a0I did hop over to see how things were going there a few times last night, but couldn't stand more than 30 seconds of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":43996,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/30\/idling-cars-are-the-devils-gas-mileage.html","url_meta":{"origin":137290,"position":2},"title":"Idling cars are the devil's gas mileage","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 30-Jul-14 2:04pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in the Dark Ages, when everything was carburetors and clay tablets, I was always taught something more like the five minute rule -- that the cost of gas burned in starting the motor was about five minutes worth of operation. \u00a0Not surprisingly, more efficient engines (and better starters) make\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12398,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/05\/13\/the_password_is_remake.html","url_meta":{"origin":137290,"position":3},"title":"The password is … remake","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 13-May-08 10:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I loved the game show Password as a kid. 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