Google Plus keeps its second position in the ranking of social networks, at a growth rate of 33%, with a total of 359 million active users, according to GlobalWebIndex, a company that deals with market research. GlobalWebIndex is a London based company that monitors Internet services through studies in 31 countries on an annual sample of 120,000 users.
Increasing the number of social network users is closely linked to efforts by Google to build a complex structure in which all services, including the search engine, YouTube and Google Maps, are accessible through a single Google account authentication.
Google Plus is still far behind Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the largest social network, claimed last year that over a billion users go to the Facebook platform, but according to the report GlobalWebIndex, the social network has only 701 million active users. Twitter has a growth rate higher than Goggle Plus, 44%, reaching 297 million users in 2013 from 206 million in June last year.
If Facebook is a social network that focuses on connecting friends over the network, Google Plus is more used to meet people that users don’t know with common interests.
Ratcliff Trez, a photographer from New Zealand, who has a page on Google Plus with almost five million subscribers, said: “It’s nice to pop into Google Plus to discover new things. Facebook is pretty good, but it’s harder to discover new people or have more in-depth discussions around passions.”
Claire Stokoe, a social media manager at Newcastle-based Mediaworks doubts that Google Plus will ever catch up with Facebook: “An authoritative Google Plus account is one of the factors that will help you rank high on Google (search results).” She added: “Whoever I ask, everyone has a Facebook account. I don’t know anyone who has a Google Plus account unless they are in the industry, and that’s because they have to.”
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