Google+ blitzes to 10 million users in just two weeks
Google+ is blazing up the charts, racking up 10 million users in just two weeks, despite being invite-only and despite launching with out a lot of marketing and hype-up beforehand.
Google's social network is growing at a truly staggering pace. The company has not gone public with any user base numbers, but Ancestry.com's Paul Allen devised a methodology to calculate an estimate. It involves using surname data from the U.S. Census Bureau to hazard an educated guess as to how many American users there are, and a ratio of U.S. to non-U.S. users to generate numbers globally.
His result is an approximate 9.5 million users worldwide. And with more than 2 million having joined in the past day and a half, the 10 million mark is just around the bend—if not already here.
Google+ wouldn't have to keep up this pace very long to become a serious contender in the social networking space. And considering that, out of the gate, social network numbers are generally slow and tend to pick up momentum after a year or three (think Twitter and Facebook), this could be the beginning of a tremendous surge. In a year, Google+ could have over 250 million users based on its current pace, or much more if it gained momentum—which would mark for a growth rate simply out of this world.
