UPDATE: Google CEO, Larry Page,  confirmed  on his Google+ profile that Google+ has reached the 10 million user mark.  

Google+ is still only in field trial with limited access as we scale the system. Users have to be invited, sign up with a profile in order to use it. However, the growth on Google+ has been great–and I’m excited to release some new metrics for you today
Over 10M people have joined Google+. Great achievement for the team

As expected, Google+ has hit the 10 million mark. Google CEO, Larry Page confirmed it during the Google’s Q2 Earnings Call while he pats on the back of the Google+ team for doing a wonderful job. Apart from that, he shared a few more interesting stats during the event.

• Google+ users are sharing and receiving over one billion items everyday
• The +1 Button is being used more than 2.3 billion times a day
• Android now has over 250,000 apps and over 550,000 Android Devices activated a day
• Google Chrome, on the other hand, has grown significantly with over 160 million Chrome users

According to the Q2 Earning report released by Google, Google’s sites generated $6.23 billion (a 20 percent increase) while paid clicks on Google sites and AdSense partner sites has increased by 18% YoY, and the average cost-per-click increased about 12%.

Read the complete report on Google  Q2 2011 Results.

Do you feel proud of yourself, since you have a Google+ account while your friends do not have one? Well, you don’t have to be anymore, because according to a recent analysis done by Paul Allen, entrepreneur and co-founder of Ancestry, indicates that Google+ is nearing the 10 million user mark and believes it will touch the 20 million mark by the end of this week.

Although Google+ is currently under a limited field test, it has seen tremendous growth since its announcement. 24 hours after the launch of Google+, the invite feature had to be closed down due to high demand of Google+ Invites. On July 10, Google+ had over 7.3 million users registered with a growth rate of 365 percent in just six days.

Google probably never expected the amount of popularity that it has gained until now. A few days back, Google+ users were bombarded with multiple email notifications spamming their inbox due to a coding error, after which the service that kept track of Google+ notification system ran out of disk space. Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice-President of Social for Google, however, apologized for the inconvenience caused.

According to Paul Allen’s analysis of the Google Plus user-base, the social networking site will have over 10 million users by Tuesday (July 12) and expects to cross over to 20 million users by this weekend. He said that his analysis was based on a survey of the surnames appearing on the site. With the help of the US Census Bureau data of surnames, he made a rough estimation about the number of users in Google+.

I start with US Census Bureau data about surname popularity in the U.S., and compare it to the number of Google+ users with each surname. I split the U.S. users from the non-U.S. users. By using a sample of 100-200 surnames, I am able to accurately estimate the total percentage of the U.S. population that has signed up for Google+. Then I use that number and a calculated ratio of U.S. to non-U.S. users to generate my worldwide estimates. My ratio is 1 US user for every 2.12 non-U.S. users.

We saw the usage of Google’s +1 button surpassing Twitter’s tweet button. This indicates how Google+ is gaining popularity. Now, both Facebook and Twitter, have something to worry about.

A  report  by Inside Facebook indicates that Facebook has dropped its growth significantly in the last two months. Facebook had at least 20 million users signing up per month, but the number went down to 13.9 million in the month of April and further reduced to 11.8 million in May this year. This is due to the number of Facebook scams, a potential threat to the users, that are spreading across the site in bulk. The other reason could be due to the company’s ongoing security and privacy issues.

Facebook, currently has over 750 million active users. Google+ is way behind Facebook, but looking at the way Google+ is gaining popularity, I am sure it will be a close competitor to Facebook. We don’t know how accurate Allen’s reports are, but in the coming weeks, we can expect a tough competition between the two social networking sites. Google+ can expect a higher growth rate when it comes out of beta stage and  launches  its API service.

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