  In the era when Facebook and Twitter dominate the market for social media,
Google has introduced Google+ (G+) and reported a significant growth in its
size while others called it a ghost town. This begs the question that "whether
G+ can really attract a significant number of connected and active users
despite the dominance of Facebook and Twitter?".
  This paper tackles the above question by presenting a detailed
characterization of G+ based on large scale measurements. We identify the main
components of G+ structure, characterize the key features of their users and
their evolution over time. We then conduct detailed analysis on the evolution
of connectivity and activity among users in the largest connected component
(LCC) of G+ structure, and compare their characteristics with other major OSNs.
We show that despite the dramatic growth in the size of G+, the relative size
of LCC has been decreasing and its connectivity has become less clustered.
While the aggregate user activity has gradually increased, only a very small
fraction of users exhibit any type of activity. To our knowledge, our study
offers the most comprehensive characterization of G+ based on the largest
collected data sets.
