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Google+ and Facebook. One is the largest social network in the universe with more than 800 million members, and the other is, well, Google+. If Google's social playground is ever going to truly challenge Mark Zuckerberg's social amusement park, it's going to have to keep its momentum going. So far it's been doing that. Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page announced yesterday evening that Google+ now has more than 90 million users worldwide, over double what he announced just three months ago.
Part of the reason for Google+'s early success is Google's relentless focus on improving its service.
"With Google+, we've shipped on average a new feature every day since we launched in June," Page said. "That's more than 200 updates in total."
Equally impressive to the fast growing memberbase is the activity level. According to Page, over 60 percent of its users engage on the site daily, and over 80 percent weekly. That might be hard to believe for folks who have checked out Google+ and determined it's a ghost town, especially compared to Facebook, but it's all in how you use the service and who you have in your circles. Robert Scoble, for example, is a posting machine, and Gary Whitta frequently posts entertaining tidbits. Maximum PC has an active presence on Google+ as well.
Whether you've checked out Google+ and weren't impressed, or liked what you saw and stuck around, it's hard to argue with the numbers, and things are just getting started. Still, Facebook has a huge lead, is also continuing to grow, and continues to add new services as well.
Do you think Google+ will ever catch up to Facebook?
You can follow yours truly on Google+ here.
Comments are closed on this article
Chise
January 21, 2012 at 6:53am
I actually don't mind that few of my real life friends are on G+ right now. I find G+ is a great destination for information and opinions from people well outside my normal social circle, more like twitter than Facebook for me I guess.
The Android app for G+ is a hell of a lot better than the Facebook app to, more responsive, cleaner and the auto photo upload thing rocks.
bpstone
January 26, 2012 at 5:29pm
I have a G+ account, yet I hardly use it. Most of my base are still on Facebook or elsewhere. I would like it if they would allow users to have a custom url on G+. Side note: I guess they decided to eliminate the use of html in the rich text editor to combat spammers. Right when I was hoping for ss to become available. :/ lol
I clearly remember when several muttered Facebook would go nowhere when it was still young. So much for that theory aye? lol Google plus in the future very well may end up overtaking the blue giant. There should be several improvements made to increase the likelihood of that happening in my humble opinion. One being better integration with other existing social networks. I would like to see Google plus to additionally be a social manager. We already either pay a mint or spend sometimes hours managing our networks as is with what we have got now. My 2¢. ;)
SPreston2001
January 20, 2012 at 9:47am
I think its more like alot of people have a google+ account but rarely use it. If you have a google mail account then signing up for google+ is just a few clicks away which results in alot of people creating accounts.
Paul_Lilly
January 20, 2012 at 10:06am
That's the thing though -- according to Larry Page, 60 percent are engaging the site daily, and 80 percent on a weekly basis.
