The rise of Google+ in the social networking genre got a big boost in December, at least from one study. Paul Allen, who has been using his own formulas to come up with the number of Google+ users since it launched earlier this year, posted up a new report on his own Google+ page this week. He claims that in December the sign up rate for Google+ actually increased compared to previous months.
He states that Google+, according to his numbers, now has 62 million registered users, up from 50 million at the beginning of December and 43 million at the beginning of November. Allen states, "It may be the holidays, the TV commercials, the Android 4 signups, celebrity and brand appeal, or positive word of mouth, or a combination of all these factors, but there is no question that the number of new users signing up for Google+ each day has accelerated markedly in the past several weeks."
If the growth rate continues at this rate Allen predicts that Google+ will reach the 100 million user mark in late February. By the end of 2012, he predicts that Google+ could have as many as 293 million users at the current growth rate.
However, he adds that he expects Google+ to sign up even more people at an even faster rate in 2012. He states, "Google can continue to integrate Google+ into its other products and word of mouth will continue to build. Most importantly, 700,000 Android devices are activated daily and this will become a very significant source of new users for Google+. That number will also grow next year." Therefore he predicts that by the end of 2012, Google+ could have over 400 million users.