On October 14th 2011, we reported Google+ has reached 40 million users which was an official statistic that was announced by CEO Larry Page as part of Google’s 3rd quarter earning conference call.

We also covered on November 20th 2011, that traffic to Google+ was up by 25% reported by hitwise a online consumer search and behavior intelligence company. But recently couple of days ago, GWI reported that Google+ now has 150 million users and it’s counting.

Really? We were really surprised by the claim.

If we go by 40 million users in Oct 14th 2011 to 150 million in Dec 22nd 2011, then the traffic and signup of users to Google+ has to almost quadruple or increase 4 fold in 2 months time which is less likely to happen in our opinion.

To support our claim recently Vic Gundotra of Google+ recently shared a post by Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace (where Vic agrees with what Tom has to say)

Vic Gundotra of Google+ shares Tom Anderson's post

Here is what Vic says

There is a reason why +Tom Anderson is one of the most followed people on Google+. His posts are insightful and fun to read. If you don’t have Tom in your circles, you’re missing some great content.

and part of Tom Anderson shared post first para reads as

Recently I saw this article that claimed Google+ has 150 million active users. That’s a bit silly. I can tell you from experience with large scale audiences (over @ MySpace) that it’s nowhere near that number in terms of “activity” defined by any normal definition of “active” (sometimes companies try to say an “active” user is one that logged in once within a month, sometimes once a day, etc). Whatever the actual number is, it doesn’t really matter because Google has a history of “winning” and here’s how they do it: speed, or, you might want to call it efficiency.

Although we don’t have any solid data from Google+ team or management, 150 million looks way too high and unrealistic in our opinion. Our ball park estimate (i.e guestimate) is between 80 million ~ 100 million users.

If Google management continues the pattern of releasing statistics as part of earnings call (like last one) then we should hear the next google+ official statistics announcement on 19th Jan 2012 as part of the Google’s 4th quarter earnings conference call.

But whatever the number is one thing is for sure, Google+ is gaining steam and growing at a steady pace and maintaining the historical record of fastest growing social network of all times.

Please share your thoughts through comments below.