Study: Google+ Will Overtake Facebook’s Social Sharing By 2016

Google+ is turning 2 years old this month and has seen both solid growth and criticism during these first years. However, all that talk of Google+ ghost town talk could soon be moot according to a recent SearchMetrics study. Not only is Google+ projected to being thriving, but it is also projected to pass Facebook in social shares on February 2016.

To generate this data, SearchMetrics looked at comparison of average monthly growth of Facebook “shares” vs. Google “+1s” from the previous 6 months. The study saw that the number of Facebook shares grew roughly 10% per month while Google+’s +1 growth was growing at 19% per month. In addition to looking at recent growth, the previous 15 months were also analyzed and showed staggering results:

While the image charts the rapid growth rate (in %), a key item to note is the overall reach number listed to the right. The current number of Facebook shares is 29 billion, while Google+ is just over 2 billion. While the trends are favorable for Google+, it is important to remember that Facebook currently has 15x the social sharing … today.

Marcus Tober, founder and CTO of SearchMetrics, stated the following about the growth:

“While it still has a relatively small base, Google+ activity and users are growing at an insane speed. And the unthinkable is possible – in terms of the important area of sharing activity at least, our data shows it could actually catch up with Facebook if the trend continues ….  This year Google announced that its Android operating system has over 900 million activations.  So since last year, this means a growth of over 100% on the basis of 400 million activations about a year ago. And these are all directly connected to a Google+ profile”

For more information and the full report from Search Metrics, see the official press release.