The buzz may be dissipating slightly around Google’s first delving into the social networking world but their iPhone app has risen to the top of Apple’s charts. Google+’s App achieved the feat after being available to users for a mere 24 hours. It may not seem that significant but in the same rankings Facebook is in 15th place with Twitter way back in 37th. Twitter’s excuse may be the dozens of unofficial apps that you can use. Facebook doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
The service, still in relative infancy, is invitation only and if you don’t have many friends on it you may wonder if there’s any reason to stay with the site.
Google+’s ranking at the top of the app store coincides with reports that the invitation-only service has now reached a nadir of 18 million users. According to Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen the site has dropped off slightly, the growth rate dropping by 50% from where it was at its peak. It’s still growing at some rate though.
He commented, “Last week we saw two days where more than two million signed up in a single day. If that rate had continued, Google+ would have reached 20 million users by last Sunday night. But the last four days have averaged only 948,000 new users, and yesterday the site added only 763,000. Yesterday’s growth of 4.47% was the slowest viral growth since Google opened up invites back on July 6.”
The blog also added that the site still hasn’t been promoted on any of Google’s other vehicles such as Google.com and YouTube or been opened up to the general public. When it does you can expect that the service may experience another huge spike in users.
