Google’s social media site Google+ is reported to have now signed up over 43 million users – an increase of 30% – since moving away from its invite-only testing model.
According to a report published by SlashGear, on September 9 the site had 28.7 million users; this had then increased to 37.8 million by September 22, and now 43.7, with most of the growth for the latter period coming “in the last two days”.
There are claims that much of Google+’s audience gains are down to Facebook’s implementation of new and highly unpopular features, although the company has yet to provide any official statistics.
The findings appear to be reinforced by industry tracker Experian Hitwise, which reported online traffic to the nascent social network rocketed 1,269% just one a day after the invite-only bar was lifted.
It says the number of visits to Google+ hit 15 million for the week, up from 1.1 million the week before, although this data did not include traffic from mobile gadgets. “In just one week, Google+ went from ranking as 54th most visited site in our Social Networking and Forums category to 8th place,” the company said in a blog post.
