Google Plus opened its doors last week after being an invite only exclusive paradise since launching back in July. It has meant that visitor numbers have spiked and there has been even been the sight of the odd girl knocking about! Think back to how it was before. Google Plus was like a place you always looked at on a night out and never found your way inside. That day eventually comes and after all the build-up you realized it’s good…although at the same time, similar to another place you were at last week.
Since opening its doors to the public, Hitwise has estimated that US visits have increased from 1.1m to 15m – representing a 13-fold increase. In a word: WOW. Only days earlier, another estimate put the total number of people on the site at 43.4m – a 30% increase since they went public. It’s still no Facebook. The chances of it growing even further are certainly on the cards. We only have to look at the fate of MySpace to realize how quickly the marketplace can change.
Google’s Plus venture is something that the gaming industry will be increasingly interested in as the social gaming industry continues to grow. Since the latest social network came into the marketplace, Google announced that it was expanding into gaming to attempt to wrest every last user that it can away from Facebook. As virtual currency becomes more and more prevalent in the main stream then it’s likely that this will in turn drive some of the growth that the gaming industry is currently experiencing.
Google Plus now finds itself at 8th position on the top social networks on the planet and with this level of growth it won’t be long until it finds itself challenging the likes of Facebook and Twitter at the top. For now, the site remains some way behind Facebook’s 800m users. No one yet knows how Facebook’s profile changes will affect the site’s user base so keeping an eye on Google Plus’s development might be the best option. Also, with the current growth there will be more females making it so that Google Plus is no longer a sausage fest. Kerching!
