The number of users on Google+ has reached 25 million, and most are in the U.S. and India, according to Tuesday data from comScore.
Those numbers mean Google+ made it to 25 million users the fastest among the top social networks, but fastest might not always be best, Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis at comScore, said during a recent conference call. "Facebook took the longest and is currently the most stable," he said.
It took Facebook and Twitter more than two years to reach that milestone, while MySpace was just under two years, according to stats from comScore. While Google+ is off to a fast start, Lipsman urged industry watchers to "keep it in perspective." Facebook still dominates U.S. social networking and LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace (sort of) still have established positions, he said.
Broken down by country, the U.S. leads in Google+ usage with about 6.44 million unique visitors, Lipsman said. That's followed by India with 3.62 million and Canada with about 1.1 million. The U.K. also has about 1 million visitors, while Brazil, France, and Taiwan all have between 500,000 and 1 million. It also has a small presence in Turkey and Spain.
In the U.S., Google+ is still a bit of a boy's club; 63 percent of its users are male compared to 37 percent female. The biggest age group using Google+ is 25 to 34 with 35 percent, followed by 18 to 24 with 23 percent. The top Google+ markets in the U.S. are Austin, the Bay Area, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Google+ fans are apparently loyal to the brand; 59 percent access Google+ via the company's Chrome browser, 25 percent use Firefox, and 23 percent use Internet Explorer.
Last week, Experian Hitwise made headlines with the report that said Google+ usage had declined 3 percent in the previous week; stats that were disputed by Google. Lipsman found that engagement on Google+ is still increasing, just not as quickly as in prior weeks. Engagement was up 39 percent between July 10 and July 17, for example, but up 11 percent between July 17 and July 24.
During a July earnings call, Google said its service had more than 10 million users, who shared about 1 billion items each day, including 2.3 million uses of the "+1" feature. But Google's Larry Page didn't elaborate on when Google passed that milestone, or by how far. In late July, data from Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen put the Google+ user base just under 18 million.
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