Is Google+ here to stay?

BANGALORE, INDIA: Early days these may be, but Google's answer to social networking majors like Facebook and MySpace seems well on track to achieve what it set out to do. That is, attracting scores of members to network.

After hitting the 10 million-mark in two weeks after its launch, the number of visitors on Google+ just doubled in the third week, as per the estimate from research firm ComScore.

“I have never seen anything grow this quickly... it is definitely the fastest ascent to 20 million visitors that I can think of,” Andrew Lipsman, vice-president of industry analysis, ComScore said at the announcement.

Although the latest social networking project from Google's stable was launched in a field trial mode - not even in beta - three weeks ago, the new figures might help the search giant get over with its earlier attempts at creating the 'ultimate' social media experience - Orkut and Buzz.

While its first social networking product, Orkut, was not received well in the United States, ComScore's data suggests that Google+ had 5.31 million unique visitors from the US and 2.85 million from India out of the total 19.93 million during the period.

At this juncture, a pertinent question pops up in mind: will Google+ be able to sustain the growth of its visitors over a period of time? Its prime rival Facebook has 750 million users, of which 50 per cent access it every day.

"It can certainly beat the competition and move to the top, considering it gives social plug-in options and other interesting features, not available on other social networking sites," said social media evangelist Hari B Nair.

He added that it largely depended on how it gets incorporated as a social networking channel across industry verticals. "Almost 90 per cent of the online users in the world might have a GMail account currently. If they all start using Google+, the numbers will grow further and it can take over the social networking world." Google, according to recent estimates, has about one billion users across the world.

Having looked at the history of Google, said online evangelist and trainer Prateek Shah, "Google+ is here to stay". Loaded with all the features in Facebook, the social networking tool promising to offer more and more features to users was an exciting proposition, he explained.

"From a business perspective, they will be looking at an intra-space marketing option to integrate adverts on Google into Google+, which should help it expand," said Prateek.

Most of the new users, who were waiting just for an invite to join the Plus brigade, also sound positive about the social networking platform.

"Though I asked all my friends to send me an invite long ago, I got one only this week. But it's worth the wait. I like it better than the other sites I have used. Circles, Sparks and Huddle are so cool and assure ease-of-use, besides fun," said Shyam Prasad, a Bangalore-based techie who considers himself a privileged user of G+.

The new service also lets users post photos, messages, comments and other content from a selected group of friends. On an expansion mode, Google would soon offer features of Google+ in its other services, including YouTube.