In the days following the removal of the invite-only barrier, Google+ users increased 30 percent.
Google+ use jumped 30 percent in the two days following the removal of the invite-only status that the company employed for more than three months after launching the service.

According Paul Allen, billed as an unofficial Google+ statistician on his own Google+ account, the current Google+ user base has grown to more than 43 million users since September 9, when the service counted 28.7 million accounts. The majority of that growth, Allen says, came in the immediate aftermath of opening the service to the public.

Google+ has a long way to go if it aims to catch up with Facebook’s 800 million users, though some wonder if the social giant’s domination of the market will last. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a series of changes to the website at the company’s F8 conference. While the adjustments are normal progressions for a website, the addition of a news ticker, Subscribe functions and the complete rethinking of the user profile has frustrated a number of users. As a result, many have speculated that Facebook users, especially those already using Google for other tasks, will shift en masse to Google+.

In terms of social media marketing, though, Facebook is still the No. 1 social media service for businesses, as Google+ has yet to open for enterprise use.

While Allen’s report details new user growth, it contains no information related to activity. Brafton recently reported that Google+ posts decreased 41 percent in the two months following its launch.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.