Google is hopeful that 2012 will be the year of Google+. The Mountain View, California-based corporation launched the social networking platform in the summer of 2011 and despite a few hiccups, has managed to keep it relevant in one of the most fiercely competitive of all digital spaces. The future looks promising for Google+, but its long-term viability remains questionable. Its survival depends on many factors, including the underlying development platform and the support of third party apps.

Little Love for Third Parties

As it stands now, to say that Google+ has limited support for third party applications would be putting it mildly. Back in November, the company announced that it had released a new API, one that would give businesses the ability to manage their brand pages via third-party apps such as popular social management tool HootSuite. The API debuted with support for six partner services, which included the aforementioned HootSuite, Context Optional, Vitrue, Involver, Buddy Media, and Hearsay Social. Through API integration, these services allow brands to perform actions like post updates, manage circles, and monitor and measure page activity.

According to the November announcement, the initial roll out of the Google+ API was designed to serve as an experiment that would eventually lead to the integration of more third party apps. However, things have been slow moving to say the least as there has been no word of any new services being included. This may not seem like a big deal now, but in the grand scheme of things, Google+’s support for third party apps or should we say, lack thereof, could end up hindering its ability to grow as a platform.

Lagging Behind the Competition

When it comes to supporting third party apps, Google+ is trailing far behind its competitors. Just look at Twitter, for instance. Upon introducing its API, Twitter was greeted by a barrage of applications designed to connect to the platform in a wide variety of exciting ways. And while Twitter has since decided to pull the plug on the further creation of third party apps, there is no denying that they played a role in its fast rise up the social networking ladder by making the service much more valuable to users.

Although Facebook’s situation is a bit different, third party apps are increasingly becoming an integral part of the overall experience. This is likely to continue now that Facebook is focusing on producing applications and services through its new Open Graph protocol. Most of the apps we have seen integrated with Google+ have been the company’s own products. Right now, it is uncertain whether this is due to Google not being ready to the open the platform up to developers, or the platform itself not appealing to app makers. Either way, one would think that the addition of some useful third party programs could only help Google+.

=== Author Bio: ===
Email marketing expert, Aidan Hijleh is a freelance copywriter and serves as the Non-Profit Partnership Liaison for Benchmark Email. Aidan advocates free email marketing services to assist with the flourishing of grassroots organizations.

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.

[Image]