Enjoying three years with no rivals, Facebook may soon meet its networking match: Google+ is on the rise. Google +, or G+, is the newest social nexus, topping 60 million users since its debut in June, 2011, and epected to reach 100 million users by February, 2012, with a projected 400 million by the end of 2012.  These numbers may seem minuscule to Facebook’s 800 million customers, yet G+, is off to a better than expected start with  over 625,000 new users every day.

First launched on June 28, 2011, in a “field-testing” phase, G+ invited 18 year-olds and above to use this site but suspended its offer the next day because of an “insane demand for accounts.” Integrating other Google social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz made Google+ grow rapidly, reaching 10 million users in just two weeks. When the Google+ for mobile use appeared in Apple stores last October, it became the stores’ top selling app.Google+’s quick popularity has unique interfaces such as Circles that allows users tocreate and organize multiple groups of others for sharing. Privacy settings allow customers to hide the circle or make it open for others to see. A maximum of 10 people can be on Hangouts, a group video chat, whih is also available on G+’s mobile version.

Sparks, a modified version of the Google search engine itself, identifies topics you might be willing to share with others. With fast and effective results plus new integrated sources, Google+ may take fewer than three years to compete mightlily with its major competitor.

Written by Shabaz Khan’14. Photo courtesy of www.google.com.