Google+ Fastest Growing Social Network Ever, ComScore Study Says

The Google+ project, launched on June 28, is now the fastest growing social network ever with over 25 million members, according to a report from Web tracking firm comScore.

Google+ has, so far, out-paced the meteoric rise of sites like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, comScore vice president for industry analysis Andrew Lipsman told the AFP.

The site is also catching on globally with significant membership in India, Britain, Canada, and Germany, according to the study. A July 2011 comScore study found that Google+ had attracted "20 million visitors in 21 days" and that the United States was home to approximately 5.3 million Google+ users. India was the country with the second-highest number of users on Google+, with 2.8 million members from India.

All good signs, but the big question for Google+ remains whether it can make a permanent dent in the social networking world.

Tech fans have closely followed the rise of Google+ during the past 5 weeks, trying to determine whether the social network will succeed amid a flurry of mixed reports--and staunch competition from the likes of Facebook, which has over 750 million members.

For example, PCMag on July 28 reported that Google+ traffic had begun to drop, but a Google spokesman quickly countered the report, telling PCMag that Hitwise's data was merely a "blip on the radar."

According to Mashable, comScore's data apparently conflicts with Hitwise's report. Writes Mashable:

A recent report from Experian Hitwise showed visits to Google+ fell 3% for the week ending July 23, compared to the previous week, and that average time spent on the site fell 10%. Meanwhile, comScore’s research shows people spent about 50% more time on the network in the week ending July 24 than in the week that ended on July 10.

Prior to comScore's most recent study, the consensus about Google+'s success has been mixed.

In July, SocialStatistics.com released a stat that claimed roughly nine out of ten Google+ users were male. This prompted Business Insider to issue the following warning: "GOOGLE+ WILL EVENTUALLY FAIL unless it attracts something it doesn't yet have: women." However, two days later, All Things D countered that stat, writing, "[N]ew analysis performed by Paul Allen of FamilyLink and Ancestry.com shows a very different gender balance. Using a method he calls 'surname-based random sampling,' with which he correctly predicted Google+’s 10 million member milestone, Allen found Google+ to be 66.4 percent male and 33.6 percent female."

The social networking site also drew ire from its users after Google deleted accounts due to doubts over their authenticity. In some cases, real users who had used a pseudonym when setting up their Google+ profile saw their accounts closed, much to their dismay.

Visit Reuters to read more details from comScore's Google+ study.

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Comments

[Charles Queen]

01:25 AM on 08/08/2011

I got my invite erly saturday morning.Needless to say I was very happy.I do think however that I would want them to go slow and take their time before they take it off of beta mode.That way they can have plenty of time to work out any bugs it might have and we may encounter

[Doobie101]

10:54 AM on 08/07/2011

Some of these people who comment about Google + for example; are being paid to write supportive to Google + new social media networks site. And everyone that uses Google + and other social network sites should be asking like me; WHAT IS NEW OUT THEIR GOOGLE +? PEOPLE... WE KNOW THAT ARE LAWMAKERS ARE GOING ABOUT IT ALL WRONG FOR THE PEOPLE IN AMERICA (NATIONAL DEDT, NO JOBS ETC., AND IF KNEW THEY WHERE USING THE SAME APPROACH AND METHOD AND NOTHING GETS DONE AND IT'S ALL THE SAME, THEN WHY ARE PEOPLE ACTING LIKE THEY LIKE OR LOVE SOMETHING THAT IS THE SAME AS ALL THE REST OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS SITES. THEIR IS GOTTA BE ANOTHER APPROACH THAN SAY GOOGLE +. COME ON MICROSOFT LETS SEE YOUR APPROACH FOR A SOLUTION AND DIFFERENT KIND OF SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK SITE. G+, FB, AND ALL OTHERS SOCIAL SITES ARE STARTING TO GET VERY BORING. CAN WE HAVE SOME NEW PLEASE?

[Louis Bernardi]

07:56 PM on 08/07/2011

Really interested in reading a large block of capital letters.

[Charles Queen]

01:27 AM on 08/08/2011

I'm not.I want them to go slow before taking it off of the beta mode so they can work out any bugs it may have

[Doobie101]

10:03 AM on 08/07/2011

Google plus, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Myspace all have in common; their all the same, even down to the functionality and almost to the designs of all social networks. Even all their methods; photos, videos, photos and links in the stream line (News Feed) etc. If Google plus want to be #1 in the social media network world, they need another approach or delivery. How about something like an email web-base social media network, or something that emails can be apart of social networks? Something that adds favor to the debate. Google Plus will never be #1 if they don't find another way to excite the people around the world. Circle of friends, what is that if it's in common with all the others. To me, that is very common feature and I should be able to control who sees my comments and photos etc., wow big deal! I think the person who comes up with this email social network idea would grow really fast, and it could even have a better method or delivery with an email social network, because who doesn't have an email account? Then Google plus will be wondering why they didn't figure it out and come out with that's different than the others. Otherwise what's the point? The point is that all social media network is and will become static but because of FB, they will always be #1 because they have the numbers right now. Come on people!

[Louis Bernardi]

07:56 PM on 08/07/2011

Some formatting wouldn't hurt.

[Charles Queen]

01:29 AM on 08/08/2011

Good point,I would also like to see perhaps a couple of say,themes for you'r page as well,perhaps in time they will come out with a couple or so

[Eleanor Ruby Moon]

01:20 PM on 08/06/2011

Google+ is a meld of the best of the original social networks , eg, mIRC, ICQ, in functionality and I would prefer that the hordes on fb don't migrate over to G+.

[Charles Queen]

01:30 AM on 08/08/2011

I like the idea they have of being able to pick and choose as to who I want to see this or that without others seeing it,thats a good feature for sure

[TheSardonicAtheist]

06:30 PM on 08/05/2011

I'm one of those misanthropic, curmudgeon people, who refuses to sign up for another social networking site that tries to promote itself as being better than Facebook, when it all actuality, it's pretty much just Facebook, except for a few minor changes.

[Louis Bernardi]

08:05 PM on 08/07/2011

You're really showing Huff-post how non-conformist you are. You sound so much more intelligent using words like misanthropic and curmudgeon, your point must be right. I love how there's a handful of competing social networks like: ... uhh andd ....? Oh and the minor changes like shifting information to those you want to see it and not just displaying it for the world to see. Yea, they're similarities but are they going to just get rid of newsfeeds, profiles and friends? think again buddy.

[Christopher Buczkowski]

12:47 PM on 08/04/2011

the biggest difficulty for Google in "winning" the social networking "war" is just going to be getting a comparable user-base to Facebook. I think they've created a much more efficient, user-friendly, and elegant social networking solution than Facebook has, but until enough of a person's established friendships migrate, it's going to have less content. give it a few more months, and it could start to give FB a run for its money.

[Ayesha Khan]

12:06 PM on 08/04/2011

Its very difficult to predict anything about Google but one thing is definite that all its features are extremely positive.. Google is moving in the right direction with most of its Gadgets attracting Major users from around the Globe--- Some of the features might not be as popular as we expect them to be how ever the Sentiments for Google on long term basis are very very Encouraging as they are making the correct usage of Technology by Merging with Reputable and Sound Organizations in different fields ---

[JamesAndre]

11:23 AM on 08/04/2011

What makes G+ a winner? I just used G+ to share my travel plans with friends and family, just by posting on G+. What's so unusual about that? None of the people I shared with have a G+ account. Some don't even have gmail.

[Howard Faulkner]

10:59 AM on 08/04/2011

[Sandy Weiner]

10:54 AM on 08/04/2011

I don't understand how google plus is growing. I asked for an invite over a month ago and still did not get an invite nor found a way to get on.

[turlockgirl24]

05:35 PM on 08/04/2011

we can wait together my friend lol

[misshilaryrose]

10:08 AM on 08/04/2011

yeah but do people USE it? I have an account as do quite a few of my friends and not one of us share on there regularly.

[novatom]

09:31 AM on 08/04/2011

I'm amazed that this story left out the main qualifier to its attention grabbing headline. Google+'s spectacular growth has just about everything to do with Facebook's success and consumers' receptiveness to social networks. The fact that it's far better than other competitors to FB, including MySpace, does play a small role but it's not the main reason. In fact, the majority of people who flock to Google+ don't find the experience that much different than FB (although I think that perception could change somewhat once users better understand the "circles" concept).

But overall, recent historical trends account for its phenomenal pickup. That's pretty much it. It's not too hard to understand.

[Rexter]

09:31 AM on 08/04/2011

I wish they would build a secure site that connected everyone directly to their elected representatives and allowed us to review legislation they're voting on. Allow us to vote on it and put our two cents in. Put national issues out there for referendum voting, the technology is almost there. I don't think Washington hears us and am tired of a new poll everyday where 1,000 people sampled somehow means 300 million of us feel or think the same way.

It would be great to see cases where 90% of a representatives constituents voted this way, yet the representative voted the opposite or the same way. I think all of us want to be heard and be involved in shaping our future beyond the ballot box.

[Eleanor Ruby Moon]

01:12 PM on 08/06/2011

Rexter: How can I retweet this? And post all over fb? You should post this on the White House website too. Best idea I've heard this week, um, no, this month. Well, this year actually.

[Rexter]

09:35 AM on 08/08/2011

They use the media to lead us around with speeches and carefully crafted sound bites, it's all just a great big noise machine that keeps us guessing at the truth. This information, or disinformation, system is by design. I want to skip all that and go right to 'What did you vote on today on my behalf, and how did you vote?", and a big WHY when it goes against your contituents. Save all the millions of media words, all that drama - cut to the quick and grade these folks.

[Louis Bernardi]

08:14 PM on 08/07/2011

I wish we all had a single ID, we could have our drivers license, insurance, health card info, family connections, living area, convictions, every single piece of government information on us, organisation ranks (like for jobs or say a community or church ranking / membership), debit, credit card, dna, fingerprints, retina scans, everything about your person meshed together. The governments of the world could all do this for their own citizens and they could have similar international standards like passports and interlace, say fast / instant fingerprint information for crime investigation, the doing away with millions of wasteful forms and a centralized spot to securely (fingerprints, dna etc) access everything we need. I find it ridiculous that something close to an attempt at this really hasn't happened. This might be the time technologically start this, but i can understand its recession time and hippies and conservatives would whine about privacy violation and other wrong nonsense but its my dream to have this done. It's like serious facebook? ahhh i love huffpost it makes me dream

[Eleanor Ruby Moon]

11:44 PM on 08/07/2011

Louis: Is this Hu Jintao?

[Alex James Kitching]

07:33 AM on 08/04/2011

The problem with Google (and the reason why I ultimately think G+ will fail) is that it doesn't have the right kind of brand image to pull this kind of thing off. Google is not 'cool', in the same way that Microsoft isn't 'cool' and that Mozilla isn't 'cool'. Microsoft realised this pretty early on, scrapped their own effort at social networking (remember MSN Spaces?) and wisely worked *with* Facebook instead instead of trying to compete in a lost race.

Arguably, Apple have the right kind of brand image to succeed at social networking, but they're having their own issues getting Ping to be relevant.

Don't get me wrong, G+ will find its audience, but that audience is only realistically going to cover those who think Facebook is broken enough to need fixing - which is a very small minority. G+ doesn't offer enough *extra* compared to what Facebook offered against MySpace.

[Yam716]

08:12 AM on 08/04/2011

I think the *extra* is the problem with FB.

[Alex James Kitching]

08:31 AM on 08/04/2011

Perhaps, but if 'rogue' Farmville notifications are the extra then don't forget that it's all entirely opt-in, and very quick to opt-out of.

[mhtowe64]

09:25 AM on 08/04/2011

facebook is turning into myspace. Google+ is for more mature people who know functionality when they see it.

[Alex James Kitching]

09:48 AM on 08/04/2011

Well, considering that G+ has only really been accessible to journalists and tech bloggers so far, it shouldn't really come as a surprise that there aren't hordes of students filling it with drunken photos of last weekend.

And that's the way I think it's pretty much going to stay, to be honest. I believe G+ will find its niche with bloggers, tech columnists and... forgive me for not being able to find another word, but... geeks. For the vast majority of people who don't mind Facebook (and more importantly are *used* to Facebook), G+ will remain irrelevant.

[adambum]

04:25 AM on 08/04/2011

The reason why G+ will succeed -- in my opinion -- is because it's unavoidable.

If you use Gmail and Picasa, and upload photos every once in a while to Picasaweb, it seems natural to make the leap and share everything on Google+. I think people will catch on regardless of whether they really want to or not.

That's what I like about it over Fb. It's unavoidable, yet natural. Who cares if people don't invite me to their silly farms to read my horoscope?