Google+ Reaches 90 Million and Counting

Google's GOOG problems have been well publicized but nobody can deny the impressive and perhaps surprising growth of Google+. Since its launch in June 2011, approximately six months ago, the product has harnessed a steadily growing number of users, now standing at 90 million. Facebook has 800 million users following its launch around seven years ago so, on the surface, Google+ is well on the way to equaling that. Of course, these things do not work exponentially. Arguably, Facebook's biggest victory was smashing Myspace into oblivion. Practically forcing people to move over from one site to another while leaving Myspace a graveyard was a spectacular achievement, and realistically it is one which Google+ has to repeat if it is going to be deemed a genuine success. Few people will want to have more than one profile to monitor. LinkedIn succeeds because it is seen as something else completely – a professional site for business networking. But how many people will want to have a LinkedIn, Facebook AND Google+ profile to sift through? So yes, Google+ has a lot of work to do. It claims that it is not a social networking site but let's be realistic here. It is. Still, 90 million uses in six months is undeniably impressive and it would be crass, cynical even, to deny Google its moment of glory. GOOG chief executive Larry Page is certainly enjoying the day, pointing out with glee that Google+ has added a new feature every day on average, or 200 updates in total. “Engagement on Google+ is also growing tremendously. I have some amazing data to share there for the first time: Google+ users are very engaged with our products - over 60per cent of them engage daily, and over 80 per cent weekly.” A number that Google is not releasing, according to the Telegraph, is how many of those 90 million users are active. This is crucial, because a lot of people have been “invited” during an aggressive and successful marketing campaign. A lot of those people set up a profile, particularly during the time when we were told that the invitations were limited. Everybody likes to feel special, after all. But how many of those people have gone on to maintain that profile remains to be seen. Still, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora told the Telegraph that Google+ is not a social media site, stating that, “It is a platform which allows us to bring social elements into all the services and products that we offer. So you have seen YouTube come into Google+; you've seen Google+ with ‘direct connect' go into our search business. We are trying to make sure we use social signals across all of our products... It's not just about getting people together on one site and calling it a social network.” Still sounds like social media to us.