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  • Joan Miller (Google+)
    You received this message because Joan Miller shared it with dist-gen@afhs.ab.ca. *Google+ To Pass 10,000,000 Users Tomorrow* (on 7/12) As I promised on
    Message 1 of 1 , Jul 12, 2011
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      Since I have been tracking this same cohort of surnames from my first day, I am able to accurately measure growth over time.

      I am not claiming perfect accuracy, but I do think the model is sound. A quant has suggested a mathematical formula that I can use to calculate a range of Google users with a 99% level of accuracy, and one of my employees is working on that math now. I hope to include that in future models.

      Here is one way to look at my model. Imagine the U.S. government in 2020 has no money left. I know that's hard to imagine, but stay with me. Imagine they wanted to conduct a 2020 census and subsequent decennial censuses with a degree of accuracy (let's say 95%) and to do it on a shoestring budget.

      They had complete data for 2010 - the population and growth rates for every city and town in the country. To do 2020, they could just take a random sampling of 100 cities and towns across the U.S. that were representative and conduct the census JUST for those cities every 10 years. If those 100 cities averaged the same growth rates as the rest of the country, then their decennial censuses would be fairly accurate but very inexpensive. (Obviously the US example won't work and shouldn't be tried, since the purpose of the U.S. census is in part to determine Congressional representation - so a complete census must be done in the entire country.)

      But my project is like that - a low-budget sampling. I have randomly selected 100 uncommon U.S. surnames and I am tracking the number of Google+ users with those names - updating my counts every 2-3 days. I am assuming that the growth in G+ users with those surnames is similar to the growth in G+ users with the other 150,000 or so surnames in the U.S. If I had resources to include 500 or 1,000 surnames in my sample, then I believe my model would be more accurate. But my time and budget available for this project are small, so it is what it is. And then I take the 2.12 - 1 non-US to US ratio to complete the calculations.

      I'm not sure how many more times I'll update this. I do believe it is quite accurate. Much more accurate than a guess. It is based on sound starting data, but some of my assumptions may not be perfect. I look forward to Google announcing actual user numbers, so I can stop working on this in all my spare time. Or, perhaps, someone will discover an advanced query that actually works - that returns unique user profile pages but no pages that contain posts. People keep suggesting queries will work, but so far, I have found that none of them is accurate for user counts.

      For reference, here are my earlier posts on this subject:

      4.5 million estimate on 7/9 (actually 12:15ish on 7/10)
      https://plus.go ogle.com/11738825277 6312694644/posts/1k8 5ZNPCu1A

      1.7 million estimate on 7/4
      https://plus.goog le.com/1173882527763 12694644/posts/VuKTM Zm9xWy
      Post by Paul Allen

      On Monday morning I plan to publish my…
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