The once-rare Google invitation button now is beginning to look ordinary.
Google+ appears to be in the midst of a population explosion.
A statistical analysis by Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com and chief executive of Facebook app maker FamilyLink.com, concludes the Google+ population reached 7.3 million on Sunday, July 10, and likely will reach 10 million today.
And if Google keeps the Google+ invitation button active, as it has since Sunday, he expects Google Plus to reach 20 million users by this weekend, he said in a Google+ post late Monday night.
"The user base is growing so quickly that it is challenging for me to keep up," Allen said.
A population of 10 million or 20 million is huge in absolute terms, especially given that the service is two weeks old today. But it pales to Facebook's 750 million, half of whom log in daily. Allen's statistics, though estimates, do provide evidence that there's demand for another sizeable social network--and that Google isn't necessarily forever doomed to fail in trying to launch it.
Facebook and Google have been fierce competitors. Facebook more than any other company showed that new competitors could outdo Google in important online markets. Now, though, Google has shown that Facebook, too, can't take its incumbent power for granted.
The public trial of Google+ began with a limited set from the tech in-crowd.
Google+ began with a small group of the tech in-crowd, but has been steadily expanding. The invitation button that let people add their friends had been a rarity, but the current explosion is doubtless fueled by the relatively easy availability of new invitations. In addition, it Google appears not to be throttling the sign-up rate, or at least throttling it less, for those who receive invitations.
Allen isn't the only one impressed with the Google+ growth.
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