I know there are various versions of this floating around the web. I like this one because:

1. It involves donuts.
2. It includes newer sites like Pinterest and Instagram
3. The G+ one is funny and unfortunately true (I’m still rooting for you Google+!)

Source: Three Ships Media. I originally received it via a Falk Harrison coworker’s email.

It’s your 21st century education.

Fact: You guys collectively make me smarter. You’re my crazy think tank / insights generator. So… thank you.

— Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) January 27, 2012

I like Google+. I think they’ve built a nice service, certainly eons ahead of Buzz. But Google+ has a problem. It’s called “173 > 3.” Not enough people are using it. I think competition is healthy (keep Facebook honest), so I sincerely hope G+ gains a stronger usership. Note that I did not say more “users,” which is a metric social platforms often cite. It is irrelevant how many people have signed up for the service. All of those people with Google+ accounts are currently over on Twitter and Facebook. Larry Page recently said Google+ has 90 million users. Have any of you asked the same question I have when using Google+: Where is everybody? (echo, echo…..)

I was talking with Jason Williams at lunch and told him my litmus test for Google+: I want to be able to say something meaningful on Google+ and get some kind of response within 5 minutes. Either a reply comment or a +1 would do. I can get that on Facebook. I can certainly get that on Twitter. I was getting that on Google+ when it debuted, because we were all on Google+ trying it out. Daily social media users are not sufficiently using Google+.

 
REALLY AWESOME POSTSCRIPT
After completing my blog post, Marc Brooks brought this doozy to my attention (sorry, ignore the repeat of the image above):

@RizzoTees … that’s nothing… how abut 924K > 794 for the VW Star Wars Invite twitter.com/IDisposable/st…

— Marc Brooks (@IDisposable) January 19, 2012

Yes, as of his screen capture, 924,000 people had Facebook liked the VW Star Wars Super Bowl invite, and 794 had +1′ed it. That’s over 116,000% more Facebook likes than +1′s. Google Hangouts are quite amazing, integration of Google+ in search results is neat, but these numbers are surely causing consternation at Google.

 
REALLY AWESOME POSTSCRIPT 2
This is bad:

Users spent an avg of 3 mins on Google+ in Jan. Compare that to 89 mins on tumblr and Pinterest, 405 on Facebook. on.wsj.com/xcBEQI

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) February 28, 2012

It sucks that I am still able to write a blog post like this in 2012! Here’s some recent social media engagement from Vinos Finos Cafe in Raleigh, NC:

After @Nick314 brought this to my attention, we tweeted back and forth a bit about it, including a few others in our conversation. Scott Stratten (@Unmarketing) called it a train wreck and a perfect example of how not to tweet. After this discussion, in which Vinos Finos Cafe was included, and in which we were kind but direct as to how we felt about their inappropriate social media effort, I received this tweet from Vinos:

And you can see I responded. Will it ever end?

No offense to this fine man, but what in the world am I looking at here?

Come on guys, something can be done about this. Every one of these accounts is a fake.