This month marks the second birthday of Google+, and while the social network has gone through a lot of growing up, it has also had a lot of problems in the first two years. The majority of the press and postings about Google’s answer to Facebook has been that people have been slow to sign up and very few people are actually moving away from Facebook in favor of Google. Google+ has been called a ghost town and a failed project, but a new study from SearchMetrics suggests that it is actually growing extremely quickly and is on pace to overtake Facebook by February of 2016.
The study compared the average monthly growth of Facebook ‘Likes’ and Google+’s ‘+1’s’ from the previous six months. Facebook has been growing at approximately 10% per month while Google + grew at 19%. They also looked at the previous 15 months of data and found that during that period Facebook grew 202% and Google+ grew an astounding 788%. Of course, despite Google +’s rapid growth they are currently getting only a little over 2 billion ‘+1’s’ compared with Facebook’s 29 Billion.
The study also doesn’t take into account the fact that Facebook is already much further along in their market saturation so it is only natural for their growth to slow down. As Google + grows in popularity they will also eventually hit a point where the rate of growth decreases. The big question is when that will occur. Another question is whether or not there is really room for two dominate social networks like this. Do people really want to have to check both sites for pictures of their grandchildren or to see where their friends are hanging out that evening.
Google is hoping that there is room for both, and with a recent announcement from Google that their Android operating system for smart phones and tablets now has over 900 Million activations; up from 400 million activations a year ago, it is obvious that Google has the ability to push their social network. Each of these Android devices can come with Google+ pre-loaded which makes it much easier for people to sign up and actively use Google’s social network. While Facebook has attempts at phones, they are really at the earliest stages of entering that market today.
As always, only time will tell whether this study is accurate or if Google + will slow down much earlier than predicted. Click HERE for the full study results.
