It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Google+ is now the second biggest social network in the world, falling second to Facebook.
Trendstream’s Global Web Index calculates the growth and success of social networks the world over by measuring the number of active users, amongst other things. Their findings from the final three months of 2012 show that Google+ leapt above YouTube and Twitter to grab second spot.
Google+ is still way behind Facebook in terms of users, with almost double the number of people using Facebook to Google’s social network. It’s worth noting that the figures don’t represent the total number of users for a website, and that ‘active users’ can include those who merely have a Google account on their Android smartphone, for example.
Twitter has now dropped to fourth in the rankings behind YouTube, which is likely to have shot up in the charts due to the success of Google+, which is directly linked to the video site.
The recently re-launched Myspace currently sits way down the charts, behind LinkedIn and a large chunk of China-only social sites such as Sina Weibo.
We expect the battle of the social networks to rage on in 2013, with each network looking to become more integral in our lives by adding new features and integrating with other services that we use every day.