Along with launching Google+ Communities and debuting the Snapseed app for Android, Google also announced new numbers for its "ghost town" social network. And, while the critics haven't backed down, it's starting to look less and less like a ghost town.
It's no Facebook, but it's seeing some solid usage. Google
says some 135 million people actually go to the site and view their stream at least once a month, what everyone else might call active users.
Facebook's got a billion of those, but Facebook operates on a completely different scale at this point.
It gets better for Google+ though, there are now 235 million people that engage with Google+ in some form at least once a month.
This means people clicking +1 buttons on the web, on YouTube, in the Play Store and so on, people using Hangouts in Gmail, using social search or just interacting with Google+ in any form.
Moving forward, Google boasts that over half a billion people have created Google+ profiles, what Facebook would call registered users.
Facebook doesn't reveal registered user numbers though, but if it were, it would dwarf anything on this planet.
Active users are what's important though, Google has been pushing all of its users to switch to Google+, on Blogger, YouTube, even the Play Store more recently, so it's no surprise that many have taken the plunge. Convincing them to actually do something on Google+ is another matter.
400 million people had upgraded to Google+ profiles by September this year, Google added 100 million more in just three months. But that's actually a smaller number than last time around, Google+ added 150 million registered users in a little over a couple of months.
Even more importantly, Google+ is adding active users as well. Google first revealed this figure in September when it had 100 million. It added 35 million in that time, a 35 percent growth. As for engaged users, it went from 150 million in late June to 235 million now.
Find us on Google+
