Google+ took a mere 16 days to hit 10 million users. By comparison, both Twitter and Facebook took over 2 years to hit that milestone, requiring 780 days and 852 days respectively.
Leon Håland has kindly put together this graph, which helps put Google+’s hockey-stick growth into perspective, compared to its social networking counterparts:
Whilst there’s little doubt that Google+’s growth is impressive, it’s probably also worth noting that it did have a considerable head-start on both Twitter and Facebook, which were both starting from scratch – as a social network, as a brand…as everything.
Google, on the other hand, has thirteen years’ growth behind it and is one of the most recognizable digital brands in the world. It already had a mammoth user-base across its plethora of products, so it’s perhaps not all that surprising that it could notch up 10m users in around a fortnight.
Google+ is thought to have reached the 10 million users mark around the 13th of July, and it had doubled-up again by about a week later. That’s 20 million users in three weeks.
Google’s latest attempt at creating a social network seems to be paying off, and it has so far received pretty favorable reviews. The Next Web carried out a quick survey of our readers in early July, and we found that two-thirds of users preferred Google+ to Facebook, with less than half saying they preferred it to Twitter. The latter was perhaps an unfair comparison, given that Twitter is a different social beast to Google+.
But what about LinkedIn? We wrote earlier this month that Google+ may actually be a bigger threat to LinkedIn than it is to Facebook or Twitter. For the record, LinkedIn was launched in May 2003, and it didn’t hit the 10m members mark until April 2007. It now has over 100m members.
Interesting statistics. It’s still early doors for Google+ – will it continue on its upwards trajectory, or will it begin to plateau once the hype subsides? Only time will tell.
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As I said on Twitter, let’s not distort facts here. Google+ has 10m users in 16 days thanks to Facebook and Twitter. Not to mention Google is also the biggest search engine and therefore can drive traffic to Google+ through its recent UI changes.
I agree with Steve, Google got there so fast because of who Google are….Lots of accounts sure, I do wonder how many are interacted with daily like facebook and twitter are….I can’t imagine a lot by comparison
I think we need to give a little credit to Google here. I mean the brand was even behind Buzz and Wave. I think the product itself has legs to carry on. I will definitely point out that the technology today is far better than we had say even a couple of years ago.The smart phones , the 3G and the internet penetration has definitely played as a catalyst. Here @4PsMarketing we have been doing a lot of R&D behind the Google+ and it is really interesting to visualise how social and search come together
I think we need to give a little credit to Google here. I mean the brand was even behind Buzz and Wave. I think the product itself has legs to carry on. I will definitely point out that the technology today is far better than we had say even a couple of years ago.The smart phones , the 3G and the internet penetration has definitely played as a catalyst. Here @4PsMarketing we have been doing a lot of R&D behind the Google+ and it is really interesting to visualise how social and search come together
WTF is so impressive? At that time, Facebook and Twitter ware Nobody. Keep the proportion between a brand (Google) and No-Name (aka FB and Twitter). Contrary Google by now if was a very extraordinary Product should rich over 200 millions users (remember Gmail users?). Dude (Paul Sawers) keep the facts right. For rest of you readers, I am not a Facebook or Twitter nor Google+ fan I just want to read good quality analysis. ;-)
Are you really comparing the growth rate of a social network in 2011 to the growth rate of social networks at the very beginning of social networks?
Artificial comparison alert!
Facebook and Twitter were isolated start-ups that grew from nothing, and worked hard for their growth and deserved every new user they attracted.
In stark contrast, Google+ is not a start-up, and the main reason why they are growing so fast (or at all) is because the endless hype and free advertising and PR granted to Google+< like any story about Google, by tech blogs like this one.
Google is already famous, it’s far simpler for Google to get many users. The question is, how long do they keep them
yes they are – they admit that, and the fact google’s growth isn’t exactly from a standing start. Be interesting to see how the growth continues though.
I know people who calls Google+ as “FB of Google”. So who the real brand is? Who’s got the biggest growth in real? :)ps: I’m not a fan of either networks. Not taking sides.
Of the 20 million users, how many are people within the social media/marketing industry?
Posting articles on Facebook about how great Google+ is doing = priceless :) http://gplus.to/markmayhew
Surely a large portion of the success of google+ is down to fb and Twitter!?
And the fact that it is PUMPED into all of these peoples email inboxes…
if only I knew what to do with it now that I have it!
Awesome
I would of liked to have seen how long it took google not google plus to get to 10 million users. From my social graph I know a lot of people signed up but not many are still using.
@Darren Stuart Yeah, valid point. It’s easy to get traction on a new product when you already have hundreds of millions of users.
@Grace Duke Probably a large chunk. But I personally know a lot of people who aren’t involved in the industry who are on G+ and like it. They’re not aborting Facebook though.
@Tim Acheson Thanks for your comment. Yeah, I point that out in the article: “it’s probably also worth noting that it (G+) did have a considerable head-start on both Twitter and Facebook, which were both starting from scratch – as a social network, as a brand…as everything.” That’s an obvious flaw in the comparison that anyone can see for themselves. The real proof in G+ will be whether it continues to grow or hits a ceiling at 50m.
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after all google rocks…!
Holy smokes man thats a LOT of users. Wow.
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The headline sounds exciting but in reality that launch spike of users was to be expected.
During the same 16 day period Facebook had 10 million new users join too. (at 650k new users per day).
The users Facebook are getting now are really hard to get. Google+ has a long, long way to go before anyone should start getting too excited about user growth numbers.
Games are coming to Google +. Still love it? ;)
Google rocks, I love it way more than Facebook
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This is what we call an intellectually dishonest argument. It’s not that Facebook and Twitter were nobody’s, it’s that the social networking engagement was a fraction of what it is today. Facebook, Twitter, and a graveyard of startups all blazed the path to enable 10M users in just over two weeks.
Obvious linkbait is obvious, or poor journalism is poor. Take your pick.
This is what we call an intellectually dishonest argument. It’s not that Facebook and Twitter were nobody’s, it’s that the social networking engagement was a fraction of what it is today. Facebook, Twitter, and a graveyard of startups all blazed the path to enable 10M users in just over two weeks.
Obvious linkbait is obvious, or poor journalism is poor. Take your pick.
@Matt Albiniak I think you’ll find that the main reason Google blazed to 10m users in 16 days was because of its huge existing user-base, think Gmail, search engines…take your pick. That’s the MAIN reason. Sure, the fact that Facebook and Twitter have created a demand in the first place will help determine G+’s longevity, but I believe the initial burst of users is from curiosity about exactly what it is. I think this would’ve happened to a large degree, irrespective of Facebook and Twitter coming before it.
Not against Google+..in fact liked it a lot…But you can’t deny that FB has revolutionized the social media…And when they came first people needed the time to learn it…now ppl know what social networking is all about…It is unfair to justify the start-up growth rate in the same graph…
10m users, each with 5 accounts. Utter nonsense.
10m+ in Beta pre launch. That’s impressive for a bare bones beta with no marketing effort. They haven’t even cross promoted on their existing web properties yet. They haven’t even fired their small guns yet, never mind potential big guns like g+ games. I really believe that Google have a series heavy hitting g+ features, upgrades and addons over the next few months that’ll make it unstoppable.
10m+ in Beta pre launch. That’s impressive for a bare bones beta with no marketing effort. They haven’t even cross promoted on their existing web properties yet. They haven’t even fired their small guns yet, never mind potential big guns like g+ games. I really believe that Google has a planned series heavy hitting g+ features, upgrades and addons over the next few months that’ll make it unstoppable.
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@Human Row i dun think thats an valid argument. thats more reasonable to twitter n facebook.
@Human Row i dun think thats an valid argument. thats more reasonable to twitter n facebook.
@Matt Albiniak u are right. but u seems the point, Google+ is spreading and people are excites abt. and the right data to study would be .. hows the growth of twitter and facebook at the same time.
@Jonny Lazer Having a potentially popular product in beta stage is the most valuable weapon a starting service has… ;)
Google+ has had the benefit of having facebook for people to talk about it on, let’s not forget! There’s no real relevant reason why Google+ has had so many users so quickly…it just has.
Think about how many Gmail accounts were already there!
If the Google+ was the first Social networking website then, it wouldn’t have reached 10M users in such a less time. Since people got used to social networking sites, so it became easy for users to switch to Google+ in no time. :-)
If the Google+ was the first Social networking website then, it wouldn’t have reached 10M users in such a less time. Since people got used to social networking sites, so it became easy for users to switch to Google+ in no time. :-)
Very True!
Even though Google+ is a social network, it uses other networks to adver itself
Even though Google+ is a social network, it uses other networks to advert itself
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