Google+ predicted to hit 400 million users

According to new estimates, Google’s social network Google+ is growing bigger every day, adding 625,000 new users to its total every 24 hours. With its innovative ad campaigns, it would cross 400 million users by end of 2012.

According to new estimates, Google's social network Google+ (G+) is growing bigger every day, adding 625,000 new users to its total every 24 hours.

The figures come courtesy of Ancestry.com founder and Google+ tracker Paul Allen, who says G+ has recently passed 62 million users. Allen and his team have been tracking Google+ statistics since July, running "hundreds of queries on various surnames."

In October, Google announced that the social network had garnered 40 million users. If Allen's figures are correct, the site has seen a huge increase in new users over the last few months (however, how many of these new and existing users are actually active on the site is still unclear).

"If this rate of new signups (625k daily) continues then Google+ will reach 100 million users on Feb. 25th and 200 million users on August 3. They will finish 2012 with 293 million users," said Paul Allen in a December 28 post on Google+.

"I expect the growth to continue to accelerate however," he added. "Google can continue to integrate Google+ into its other products and word of mouth will continue to build.

Most importantly, 700,000 Android devices are activated daily and this will become a very significant source of new users for Google+. That number will also grow next year."

Figures from market analyst comScore also suggest G+ is far from the unpopulated "barren desert" that some news outlets have said it is. ComScore reported that G+ saw close to 67 million unique visitors to the plus.google.com subdomain in November, up from 65 million in October.

Allen estimates that with its accelerated growth trends G+ will hit 400 million users (note that this figure does not indicate the number of active users on the social network) by the end of 2012 -- Facebook currently boasts 800 million active users and Twitter revealed it had more than 100 million active users in September.

Britney Spears, Google+'s most followed user, became the first person to reach the 1 million G+ followers milestone on the social network in December. Since then G+'s second and third most followed users, Google CEO Larry Page and musician Snoop Dogg, have also ticked past 1 million fans.

During the holiday season Google launched a series of new TV ads to promote its social network. The company hoped the ads would entice new users to sign up by showing off unique G+ features such as its group video chats aka "Hangouts."

Google+ monthly users according to Paul Allen:

July 13 - 10 million

August 1 - 20.5 million

September 1 - 24.7 million

October 1 - 38 million (Larry Page announced 'more than 40m users' on Oct. 13)

November 1 - 43 million

December 1 - 50 million

December 27 - 62 million

January 1 - 65.8 million (forecast)

February 1 - 85.2 million (forecast)