Google+ Growth Accelerating. Passes 62 million users.
Google+ Growth Accelerating. Passes 62 million users. Adding 625,000 new users per day. Prediction: 400 million users by end of 2012.
Context & Ripple Effects
Six months after Google+ crossed 10 million users in mid-July 2011, the service reports 62 million registered accounts growing at 625,000 per day — a pace that makes the stated end-of-2012 target of 400 million a matter of simple arithmetic rather than hope, and explains why Google is comfortable putting a number on the record this time.
The catch, flagged in TechCrunch's same-day pickup of the story, is that only the signup count is public: neither Google nor any third party has published an active-user figure, so the registered total is doing all the persuasive work in a market where rivals measure themselves the same way.
First-order effects
- At 625,000 signups per day, Google+ adds roughly 20 million accounts a month, putting the next round-number milestones weeks apart and giving Google a running headline metric through 2012.
- Advertisers and partners evaluating Google+ now have a scale number but no engagement number, leaving purchase decisions resting on an unverified activity base.
Second-order effects
- Rival social platforms come under pressure to answer registration-based comparisons with engagement disclosures of their own, shifting the public argument from network size to actual usage.
- Coverage splits into two competing narratives — growth momentum versus unmeasured activity — and each new Google+ milestone forces the question of whether Google will publish figures beyond signups.
Third-order effects
- If the 400-million-by-end-of-2012 projection lands, registered-user counts will have hardened into the standard currency of social-network competition, with engagement metrics treated as voluntary disclosure.
- The widening gap between signup curves and demonstrated usage becomes the structural fault line that press, advertisers, and eventually analysts probe as every platform scales.
The trend: Social platforms are scaling on registration velocity while the industry's real contest quietly migrates to who can prove engagement.