Today
Google’ Senior Vice President, Engineering, Vic Gundotra, released
a post welcoming Nik Software and updating current Google+ stats. According to Gundotra, 400 million users have “upgraded” to Google+ since public signup opened to all.
Of the 400 million users, 100 million users are monthly active users of either plus.google.com or the Google+ mobile app.
Gundotra stated that the active users today are derived from both mobile app users and those who visit plus.google.com:
“While Google+ is all about creating a better experience across Google, it’s also a destination. And here too, I’m happy to report that we have just crossed 100,000,000 monthly active users on Google+ (plus.google.com and mobile app).”
UPDATE: In July Google announced that the Google+ had 150 million active users as a social layer (+1’s from websites, those who used circles in gmail, android users who +1’ed an app, etc). The number released today was the first time any data on plus.google.com and Google+ mobile usage have ever been released. While both numbers are “active monthly users” they are very much apples & oranges.
In July 2011, Google+ had just 10 million users, then in October the numbers jumped to 40 million users. In January, Google began forcing user to create Google+ enabled accounts and by April, Google+ had 170 million users.
Now? 400 million “upgraded” accounts.
As always the biggest question with any Google+ numbers are — what exactly do they mean? Are these users actually using the service? Are they performing actions +1’ing, sharing, posting? Are they just somehow hitting the plus.google.com domain? It’s safe to bet that of the 400 million upgraded accounts a large quantity had no idea that they were even upgraded. As Danny Sullivan reported earlier this year, Google+’s reporting on usage numbers is frustrating to say the least.
So how does that compare to Facebook? Well, not great. Facebook reports a 955 million active user base. It should be noted that Facebook’s user counts come from monthly active users, not just account creation like the Google+ 400 million number. When Facebook contacted us earlier this year they clarify how they derive their active user number:
“As you indicate, the (active user) number is a monthly active user number. An active user is someone who has visited Facebook.com and logged-in (or been logged in) or who has taken an action with a Facebook feature (e.g. clicked “like”, etc…). If the user doesn’t do any of those things for 30 days, they aren’t considered an active user. If they only see social plugins across the web–even if those social plugins include social context such as friends’ photos, friends’ likes, friends’ recommendations–but doesn’t click anything, they are not an active user.”
Additional reports do back these growth numbers up for the year-over-year stats. In July we reported that Google+ traffic was up 66% and that users spend more than 12 minutes per day ‘in the stream.‘ For more information please read the following article:
Postscript:
We’ve updated the story and title based on communication with a Google representative. This is the first time that this active monthly user number has ever been released and is not the same as the active monthly user number from Google I/O in July. To clarify any confusion please contact Google via a comment on Vic’s initial thread here.
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