Google+ passes 62 million users. Adding 625,000 new users per day.

All the Google+ hate sort of puzzles me. I absolutely <i>love</i> it. It's become my social media platform of choice, in fact. Maybe it's just that I have enough interesting people to read that it's worth it to me. I'm not sure.<p>I've never been a fan of Facebook. I've had an account for years, but that's pretty much entirely for API testing. I can count the number of things I've posted to Facebook in the past year on one hand.<p>Twitter, on the other hand, I really like. It's asymmetric, and lets me engage in casual conversation with people easily.<p>Google+ is a great marriage between the two. Long-form posts, comment threads, rich media integration, topical conversation via hashtags, and both Twitter-style multicast (public) and more Facebook-style (circle- or individual-limited) conversation.<p>I realize I sound like an ad, but that's not my intent. It just works for me. The complaint I see most often is "nobody's there". If you treat it as a publishing platform, rather than an RSS reader, it becomes a lot more attractive, and then that helps to solve the "nobody's there" problem as a side-effect.

Users are one thing, <i>active</i> users are another. How many posts are being made? Are they just signing up for these accounts and never coming back? There's a reason Facebook and Twitter quote active users when announcing how many people are actually using their products.

Guess I'll state the question: How many of them actively use it? Yes, yes, before anyone jumps in with the "but you have to follow interesting people", I know that side of Google+.<p>My question is more targetted at all those people that (had to) make an account for w/e reason, but just don't open it anymore. I can only assume they are included too, are there estimates to their numbers?<p>Edit: I <i>do</i> use Google+, I just notice a lot of (seemingly?) 'dead' accounts.

I really don't want one company to control all of my services. I like that Google may have my email, MS/Google my search, and Facebook my social -- and that all three will have to learn to play together.

Users? yeah right. More like spammers and bots from the software I've seen on the blackhat forums.<p>Spammers have learnt their lesson and now know age is a factor in deciding if it's a spam account or not and are getting in early and big.

I just can't get past the feeling that Google+ violates my privacy. I've started using Facebook which I ultimately regret because it's invasive, too controlling, and has stupidity embedded in it. In the end these kinds of forums are the only ones I find worthwhile anyway. I don't care what my real friends think about what I like, and don't want anyone else I know to judge me. Why am I letting people I don't even know control the way I express myself to my friends anyway?

One measure of the relative popularity of Google+ and Facebook is to compare the number of 'likes' with '+1s' on a popular page. For example, on the following page there are currently 64 '+1s' and 260 'likes': <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142011.html?campaign_id=rss_topStories#" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142...</a><p>By this measure, Google+ is at 25% of Facebook. I remember when Google+ went into 'anybody-can-use-it' mode a few months ago it was only around 5%. This suggests Google+ is doing quite nicely, thank you. But perhaps it is just showing how Google+ is becoming more popular with spammers...?

I find it funny that people on HN knock Google+ because of the lack of people on it. While at the same time using HN instead of digg or reddit. Why are you drawn to Hacker News over the "big" link sites. Wouldn't by your own logic you use those sites since they have so many more people. Could there be something enticing about a smaller product with higher quality that you find enjoyable. Not to say we should promote group think here as there is place for intelligent dissent, but its very ironic to use one smaller higher quality alternative while vocally rejecting another.

Don't forget, if you create a Google account you automatically have a Google+ account.<p>I made a new Gmail account for my mom a few days, now she has a Google+ account too but I doubt she'll ever touch it.

Would be more interesting if Google can provide more meaningful data like facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics</a><p>&#62;&#62; More than 800 million active users<p>&#62;&#62; More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day<p>&#62;&#62; On average, more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day<p>etc.

I would love to join Google+ but they still haven't fixed the pseudonym issues. Twitter it is, I guess.

I was recently forced to create a Google+ account, which I have no intention of using for now. So I simply typed "follow me on twitter at &#60;adr&#62;" in my description. So people who bump into my profile know where to find me.

Ok so his data shows 50 mil users Dec 1 and 62 mil users Dec 27 which is easy to calculate at 460k users a day not 625K.<p>I'm more then willing to believe that there were 625K+ users for Dec 25 and 26 though to extrapolate users for all of 2012 based on xmas day and the day after xmas sign ups of 2011 is absurd.<p>Interest in google plus is fairly flat:<p><a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22google%20plus%22%2Creddit%2Clinkedin%2Cflickr%2Cgoogle%2B&#38;date=today%203-m&#38;cmpt=q" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=%22google%20plus%22...</a><p>For comparison's sake that is 10% of twitter and twitter is 10% of facebook.

Those numbers sound great, but they don't really mean anything unless those users are contributing content and establishing a community within Google+. It takes all of 10 seconds to become a member, but Google+ needs a better way of encouraging new users to complete their profile information, make posts, and add their friends.

I wonder if Facebook is becoming the new Myspace in terms of quality of content shared. With Google you have the sense that some people are using it to replace their blogs and possibly connecting on a more professional level whereas Facebook is more about catching up with others and sharing random thoughts/opinions via short messages and likes/dislikes. The first one to have a tighter integration with Twitter and has the most adoption among Twitter users will win. Linkedin --&#62; Google + &#60;--- Facebook Also another thing, Google App users are already opted in by default and with more and more companies using Google Apps, that only reinforces the more professional connections.

What I don't like about Google+ is that they already have a spam problem.

I think the big sign of growth for G+ is its growing pains. Hangout and other components simply don't perform as well as they did when it was a brand-new service.

Google+'s killer feature (at least from what I've seen) is Circles. Not being able to easily control who sees what on Facebook is the reason I don't post more personal content to it. Being able to easily control what I share and with who - like I do in the real world - would make me 10x more likely to become an active participant on a social network. It might be time to actually sign up for an account....

Very happy to hear Google+ is doing well. I don't do much social networking myself, but serious competition for Facebook is a very good thing.

My question is what happened the week of September 18th? That was when Google+ went from flatlining to a huge jump in growth, then followup growth. Anybody know? My guess is something to do with android pushing folks to sign up, or maybe them pushing it through gmail or google logins. Something changed and they restarted the growth curve with a big spike.

Is there any correlation between G+ new users and new Android activations? One is 625K and the other is 700K per day. Just curious.

<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/arunagw/status/151969750518468608" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/#!/arunagw/status/151969750518468608</a>

What's the male/female split?

Profiles? Sure. Users? No... not even close.<p>It's actually rather telling when the only way to make Google+ sound popular is to count meaningless automatic signups.

I guess those TV commercials are helping.

Maybe the new Facebook timeline is to blame? :)

Google can try and play stupid as much as they want by reporting signups and not actives but I'm glad it isn't fooling the HN crowd.<p>Facebook long changed the game by reporting actives. Since, startups like twitter and foursquare have followed suit by reporting actives. It is very apparent what google's refusal to report actives means.