Hitwise declares Google+ a hit

Do a quick search (on Google, if you’re feeling mischievous) for ‘Google Plus flop’ or 'Google+ flop', and you end up with quite a lot of people writing off Google’s social network. Compared to Facebook, they say, it’s a fraction of the size. Even compared to Twitter, it’s tiny. What they don’t say is “ah, but remember that Google+ has really been in beta and not open to everyone”, which is something of a problem if you check out Hitwise’s latest findings since Google opened its network to everyone.

In Google+ Opens the Floodgates to All, Market Share Rockets, it’s revealed, suitably, that as soon as Google+ was opened to everyone, its number of visits went up. I fact, it went from pretty much nowhere (54th in Hitwise’s most-visited site in the ‘Social Networking and Forums’ category) to eighth.

As of the week ending September 24, it sits just behind MySpace, LinkedIn and Tagged, and if it can even keep a fraction of its meteoric 1,269 per cent market-share increase intact over the coming weeks, it’ll soon be biting at Twitter’s heels.

However, breaking the dominance of the top two, YouTube (commanding 19.55 per cent of the visits share) and Facebook (a gargantuan 64.85 per cent), will be a far more difficult proposition.