Mar 28, 2012

200 Million Google Plus Users and counting

Today is the day Google+ gets 200 million users.  This is more users than LinkedIn and Twitter but still below Facebook. My methodology is quite simple. Search Google+ for the total number of users via this command site:plus.google.com -inurl:about then subtract the total number of users that haven't filled out their Google about page on Google+ via this command site:plus.google.com "has not filled * profile yet" -inurl:about 

223,000,000 - 23,900,000 = 200,000,000

This is a lot of users! I will try give that number some perspective.
  • 200 million was the total population of the earth at the time of Jesus' birth. Now that would be one person I would add to my circles.
  • 200 million is 60 kilometres of business cards stacked on top of each other.
  • 200 million seconds is 6 years 4 months.
I have high hopes for this social network and I do hope that Google keeps it word in that they will do no harm. My methodology does need some work, but it is better than Facebook's method of just telling you how many email addresses have registered on Facebook (800 million). I know people who have 3 Facebook profiles.
We are long past the early adopters and are starting to see network effects in countries like Iceland. There seems to be a high adoption of Linux in Iceland - especially in government.