The key data points were 400 million total users and 100 million monthly active users.

Pause for a minute. Twitter only recently hit 500 million registered users and most analysts put twitters monthly actives between 150 and 200 million. Does Google+ feel like it has even a fraction of Twitters adoption?

Twitter is wide spread, has viral growth and is a important part of our culture. News frequently breaks first there. Governments are overthrown as a result of organization that takes place on the platform. Massive companies have been born and killed as a result of Twitter. It is not forced when you include your twitter name on a business card or in a email signature. You put it there without after thought.

Yet, Google+ has none of that. The only mentions you see of G+ are fleeting celebrity endorsements and one-off events heavily coordinated by Google employees (Obama/Dalai Lama/etc). It is when you think of these facts that the true disparity between Google+ and its competitors feels real. It is forced and does not feel natural.

via Double dbl: The Forced Social Network.

As part of Google’s announcement to acquire Snapseed’s creator Nik software, Vic Gundotra, the Senior Vice President of Engineering for Google, just announced a new milestone for Google+: 400 million registered users and 100 million monthly active users. He of course revealed the new statistic on Google+:

via Google+: 400 Million Registrations, 100 Million Monthly Active Users.

Compared with Facebook or Twitter, Google+ can seem like a veritable ghost land. I’m finding few posts from friends or interesting people on the service. And it’s not just anecdotal observations of there being slim pickings. A recent report by RJMetrics found weak user engagement with the social network. And yet Google+ claims to have an ever-growing number of users. So how has it managed to pull off that neat feat?

The not-so-apparent fact is that Google has aggressively integrated its social network throughout its properties, thus driving users to unwittingly use Google+. This is particularly true of Google+’s pages for small businesses, also known as Google+ Local.

For instance, when users search for a small business, Google automatically showcases that business on the right side of the page, as part of its Knowledge Graph initiative, which provides aggregated “answers” in addition to search results.

via You say Google+ is a ghost land? Time to revisit that one | Internet & Media – CNET News.

There’s a lot of conflicting data out there about Google+. A few studies over the past few months have portrayed the fledgling social network as relatively moribund, but another recent report from Experian Hitwise says visits to the network are growing substantially, hitting 34.9 million for the week ended Aug. 4 compared to 21.9 million visits for the week ended July 21 — a 59% jump in two weeks.

Whether the network is thriving or not, this research from Umpf, a UK-based social media firm, shows that activity on G+ is low compared to other social networks.

To prove the point, Umpf analyzed 100 online news stories across G+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The company then determined the average number of users per 100 million likely to share a story. As the infographic below shows, the gulf between G+ and Twitter in this regard is stark: Only six G+ users out of 100 million shared, compared to 197.3 out of 100 million for Twitter. The difference wasn’t as large for Facebook and LinkedIn, but G+ was still a distant fourth.

via This Infographic Shows Why Google+ is a Ghost Town.

Twitter has many third party software clients that let users draft posts and share them later. And now another sign that Google Plus is growing—it has its , a Chrome extension, for drafting and scheduling posts. Welcome Do Share, and thanks to it’s creator, Joel Califa. Many of us love Google Plus because it has a member base as intelligent as what can be found on Twitter, but it is a very visually based social network (heck, photographers are the “rock stars” if you look for who’s getting the +1s).

via Do Share, Google Plus Post Scheduling | Social Media Services and Resources | Tweet Philadelphia.

Thinking of truly embracing Google+ as your go-to social network of choice? The folks at Infographic Labs have put together a compelling infographic as to why the Google service is worth your time.

via 20 Reasons to Switch to Google+ [INFOGRAPHIC].

The company’s post claims that “more than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+,” a figure that almost doubles the figure that Google threw out for Google+ in January. Assuming the self-reported figure is true, that means that G+ is now the third-largest U.S.-based social network in the world.To be sure, G+ is still miles behind Facebook’s 850 million users and Twitter’s 500 million, but it appears to be comfortably ahead of LinkedIn’s 150 million, though LinkedIn’s figures are from February and have likely increased since then. A LinkedIn rep declined comment on the company’s current user base size.So, does that mean that Google+ is now the number three social network?

via Is Google+ the No. 3 Social Network? Depends How You Measure It.

The plot thickened last month when Google launched Search plus Your World. Jack Menzel, director of product management for Google Search, explained that now Google+ users would be able to “search across information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public web.” According to Ian Lurie from the blog Conversation Marketing, in Search plus Your World, search results that received a lot of +1s tend to show up higher in results.

Google has come out and described the purpose of a +1, but hasn’t necessarily explained the direct effect a +1 has on search ranking. Here’s a breakdown of what we currently know.

via How Google’s +1 Button Affects SEO.

This comprehensive Google+ SEO guide covers every aspect and angle of Google+ and how it impacts search. My normal TL;DR has been replaced with a Google+ SEO Best Practices section located at the bottom of this post.

I will be periodically updating this post (updated January 23, 2012) as things inevitably change. Please don’t hesitate to comment or contact me with observations or when certain features change. I also thank the many people (on Google+) who helped in the research phase of this guide.

via The Ultimate Google+ SEO Guide.

Once you get into other fields, though, things get murkier — and Google+ pages are the murkiest yet. Every proper name can be immediately associated with a Google+ profile. Likewise, in Search Plus every brand name of any and all companies, including news and media companies, will direct users to a Google+ page at both the top center and top right of the screen. That’s almost everything we search for.

Because of Google’s dominant position in search, it won’t matter if you or the company you work for enjoy Google+ or prefer its services to its competitors. It won’t matter if you never log in to a Google account to browse the web, use a different search engine, or always flip the switch on your own Google search results to “universal.” There will be a tremendous incentive to manage your Google profile, to keep it up to date, and to ensure that the material it displays presents us in a favorable light. That in turn means more users, more time spent on site, and a more competitive position for Google+ relative to Twitter and Facebook.

via Dirty Little Secrets: The Trouble With Social Search | Epicenter | Wired.com.