Unofficial statistics from entrepreneur and founder of Ancestry.com Paul Allen have claimed that Google+ is already at 62 million users, and he expects that this would grow due to the heavy integration with it on almost any Google product.
Allen notes that by January, it would have reached 65.8 million and by February to 85.2 million. He also sees that there are 625,000 new signups every day, and he sees that number growing. For those questioning, here’s Allen’s methodology:
Each week my team from elance runs hundreds of queries on various surnames which we have been tracking since July. We revised our model based on the actual user announcements made by Google on July 13th and Oct 13th.
July 13 – 10 million
August 1 – 20.5 million
September 1 – 24.7 million
October 1 – 38 million (Larry Page announced “more than 40m users” on Oct 13th)
November 1 – 43 million
December 1 – 50 million
December 27 – 62 million
January 1 – 65.8 million (forecast)
February 1 – 85.2 million (forecast)
Allen is also making a very bold prediction that in 2012, it could end next year with more than 400 million users – something that can rival Facebook.
However, while it may have 62 million users signed up on the service, how many of these users are actively using Google+? That is a better question to ask, because while you can show numbers, there is no point of keeping a social network when no one else is using it. Google’s surprising stubbornness in not releasing a proper API (one that can actually read and write) can be attributed to this problem because there is no active engagement.
For me, 2012 is do-or-die with Google+. If it does not improve engagement with the already 62 million users, then it is dead. And it should hurry, because it will lose its appeal very soon if it does not – and apps could be the very thing that saves it.