The New York Times’ story on Yahoo v Google, says that only 44,000 Google Talk users. That can’t be true, and just doesn’t make sense.
comScore data shows a total of 976,000 unique users in June. comScore quantifies this number with “total activity” metric, which perhaps should be the only number that should matter. I have asked for clarifications from comScore. They have promised to get back shortly with more details. Worldwide, comScore data shows a total of 7,126,000 Google Talk users, and around 3 million people actually using the service daily.
Update: This just in from comScore:
“976 [thousand] have the google talk application installed on their computer, 44 [thousand] of that total have engaged in IM talks.”
So in other words, the 44,000 represents the number of people who were actually using the application by engaging in IM conversations. The larger number refers to the number of times the application initiated on a computer, irrespective of it ever being engaged. So it looks like the 44,000 figure is the more appropriate comparison. It appears to be a lot smaller domestically than other IM apps.
6 comments so far
2:14 PM PT
I find that number ridiculously low. The people in my “chat circle” don’t necessary constitute a representative set, but lets say 90% of my chatting is via gtalk. Do people who use the talk from the gmail interface count (that accounts for the majority of my gtalk traffic)?
2:19 PM PT
Are they distinguishing between using google talk as an IM program, using google talk to for voip, or using google talk within gmail? from my limited experience, it seems that google talk within gmail especially has picked up considerably and created more interest in the application than the stand alone client because it is easy to use in work places were IM clients are kept off the computer. Yes, there are plenty of options, with Meebo, etc, but GMail is already a popular choice, especially for people as they graduate college and need a new email account, and so it has been a natural progression for people without AIM in the office. If I know 20 people who use it, the population at large has to be significant.
2:48 PM PT
I use Google Talk in GMail & on my BlackBerry. For VOIP, I’m still using Skype…especially since it’s free for the rest of the year.
3:11 PM PT
The number seems pretty low. Still, I have friends that work at Google who don’t use their GTalk. Go figure.
2:13 PM PT
[...] de usuarios de Google Talk ascendía a la “astronómica” cifra de… 44.000 usuarios. Es lógico teniendo en cuenta que para emplear GTalk debías descargarte un programa e [...]
6:27 PM PT
[...] considering some Google tools haven’t had great luck with consumers yet. Om Malik, for one, observed that as of July 2006 only 44,000 people used Google Talk for IM [...]
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