BitShareGoogle Plus now boasts over 90 million users
On a recent Google earnings call, Google CEO Larry Page said that Google Plus reached a new milestone. On the call he said that Google Plus now has 90 million users globally. Well over double what he announced just three months ago. 90 million total users is a high amount, given the age of Google Plus which just launched in June of 2011.
To help draw comparison, Myspace one of the first and most popular social networks launched in 2003 and didn’t reach 100 million users until three years later in 2006. Granted, social networking and Internet access back then isn’t the same as it is today. Facebook launched in 2004, but as a closed network for universities. It wasn’t until September 2006 that the site opened to everyone over the age of 13. In August 2008, two years later Facebook reached 100 million users.
So here we are, with Google Plus and over 90 million users. Not quite 100 million, but probably not far from it. The rate at which Google Plus is growing is astonishing. Now, there is a lot more to what is said than meets the eye. What are the 90 million users; are they active, or just accounts created at some point that may be stagnant? I would venture to say it’s the latter. Page didn’t say exactly how many users are actively engaged on the site, nor will he. But did Myspace and Facebook? Of Facebook’s 800 million plus accounts they now have, how many are actively engaged? Facebook does like to say that “more than half” of it’s users engage daily.
From the earnings call, Page says:
I’m also pleased to announce that there are over 90M Google+ users — well over double what I announced just a quarter ago on our earnings call. Engagement on + is also growing tremendously. I have some amazing data to share there for the first time: +users are very engaged with our products — over 60% of them engage daily, and over 80% weekly.
So respectively 60-80% of the 90 million users are “active”, which probably means they at the very least login to Google Plus. It’s important to notate that he said +users are engaged with our “products”, emphasizing that the engagement is with all of Google’s products and not specifically Google Plus. Meaning, the percentage could be even less, but we can take it for what it is at this time.
What is more shocking and certainly to inflate the number of total users is that Google is now requiring new Google product users to create a Gmail account and Google Plus account, automatically during sign up. In the same earnings call, Page said there are 350 million “active” Gmail users - you see how he emphasized active users on that number, right?
