Google"s social networking service Google+ is still gaining new users by leaps and bounds. That"s the word from Paul Allen, the third party researcher who has been calculating the number of Google+ users ever since the company launched Google+ back in June 2011. In his latest update today on his own Google+ page, Allen claims that the service now has over 100 million users.
Officially Google said during its recent quarterly financial results that Google+ had 90 million users as of January 19. Allen said today that according to his research, "They have been growing by more than 750,000 new users per day since the 19th, based on analysis of users with hundreds of different surnames."
While the growth of Google+ and its massive user base has been huge so far, Allen says that we haven"t seen anything yet. He predicts:
If that rate holds steady, Google+ will end the year with 345 million users. But as I have said before, Google has many dials and levers to use this year to increase signups and usage, including its Android 4.0 rollout. I stand by my prediction of at least 400 million users by the end of 2012.
Google recently announced it would allow kids aged 13-17 to establish Google+ accounts. That in itself could cause a huge surge in new users.