Google+ speeds to 25 million users in first month
Growing at around 1 million members per day, Google+ captured 25 million visitors as of July 24, becoming the fastest site to reach that level, according to ComScore.
In just one month, Google+ has captured 25 million visitors, making it the fastest site to reach such numbers, according to data out yesterday from ComScore.
Google's socially networked audience is likely even higher now, as the 25 million mark is through July 24, more than a week ago, as noted in ComScore's report.
Growing at around 1 million users per day, Google+ has outshined Facebook, which took three years to grab 25 million people, and Twitter, which took a little more than 30 months to reach that level, ComScore said.
Drilling down by region, Google+ has seen more than 6 million users in the U.S. and 3.6 million in India. Canada and the U.K. each have around 1 million users, while Germany has drawn in more than 920,000.
An earlier ComScore report, released July 21, showed that the social network reached 20 million users in its first three weeks.
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The amount of time people are spending on the site has been growing in spurts, according to the ComScore report. The average number of days per week that users in the U.S. visited Google+ rose 39 percent in the week ending July 17 and 11 percent the following week.
Despite the surge in users, one report has seen traffic to the social network tapering off. Data released by market researcher Experian Hitwise on July 27 found fewer people in the U.S. had visited the site the prior week and that they were spending less time there.
Google+ saw 1.79 million visits for the week ending July 23, a decline of 3 percent from the previous week's 1.86 million, Experian Hitwise said. The average user spent 10 percent less time on the site--5 minutes and 15 seconds, down from 5 minutes and 50 seconds the week before.
But Google has taken issue with such data from third-party firms, claiming that it's based on the number of visitors and not the number of users and that it doesn't doesn't include mobile usage or navigation bar usage, two ways in which members interact with Google+ from other Google services, such as Gmail.
CNET asked ComScore analyst Andrew Lipsman to clarify whether the 25 million number is tracking all visitors to Google+ or actual users of the service.
"Visitors is technically what ComScore reports," explained Lipsman. "If someone goes to the URL, they are a 'visitor' but not necessarily logged in as a 'user.' For all intents and purposes, users and visitors should be pretty close. For example, our reporting of visitors for Facebook matches up very closely to their 'active user' counts."
Google itself has lately been mum about the numbers it's seen for Google+, and a Google spokesperson was unable to verify ComScore's figures. Google last released numbers for its social network on July 14 when it reported a total of 10 million users.
Updated 9:45 a.m. PT with information directly from report and comments from ComScore analyst and Google.