Social Media Minute: Google+ Going Big, StumbleUpon Goes iPad

By Jason Harris (@harrisja) Jul 13, 2011

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

Google+ Gaining Ground: 10 Million Users Strong
StumbleUpon Releases iPad App
Apps Using Twitter Hits 1 Million
LinkedIn Overtakes MySpace to Become Number 2 Social Network

Google+ Gaining Ground: 10 Million Users Strong

Google+ is the search company's latest foray into social networking. After the disappointments of Google Wave (a project that was recently killed altogether) and Google Buzz, Google has an uphill battle in the social scene. It seems that Plus might have turned the tide according to one credible estimate of usage. According to Ancestry.com, Google has gained 10 million users nationwide as of this past Monday.

By using a surname analysis model, Paul Allen of Ancestry.com has tracked Google+ pattern of gaining users quickly. In a post on July 11, he estimates that 2.2 million users joined Google+ in the 32-34 hour period over the weekend. Have you seen people in your Twitter timeline and Facebook feed requesting and getting Google+ invites? Me too, and if the invite button stays up (Google has been taking it down to control intake of new users) the service could be an example of a rapidly growing social network.

If you've tried Google+, what are your thoughts? The sharp but minimalist design has been popular among users who are tired of Facebook's ads and relentless game invites. However, other Internet users say they don't have time in their day to devote to another social network.

StumbleUpon Releases iPad App

StumbleUpon is an innovative site that seeks to serve up sites you will find fascinating, but have yet to discover. StumbleUpon has been around for quite a while and has a happy and loyal user base of its website. The social web service is making the leap to mobile with an innovative iPad application released this week.

The StumbleUpon iPad app features a "social bar" that creates a section on each "stumbled" page that highlights a user who also liked a webpage. Also, if someone whom you follow liked the same page, their avatar will show up in the social bar. If not, a new person will pop up and the service will make a suggestion that you follow him or her. The new "social bar" helps make a human connection to the content you're surfing while on your tablet device. There are more features to the iPad app including a new "recommended for you" list and photo thumbnails of your interest.

If you're an StumbleUpon user who also has an iPad, check out the application. It might make your plain web browsing session more interesting and help you forge connections based on your interests.

Apps Using Twitter Hits 1 Million

We constantly track social networking services by a common metric: How many users are on the service. However, there's another measure of success that often gets left out and that is how robust the service is based on how many third-party applications help feed the platform. According to Twitter, the developer ecosystem is alive and well as the company recently announced that there are now more than one million applications that are registered with the Twitter service.

This means that, of all the applications on our iPads, phones and computers, more than one million tie in to Twitter to either get data from the service or allow you to "Tweet" a story. The one million mark means the ecosystem has grown rapidly in the last 12 months, as just one year ago, there were 150,000 registered applications. Adding to all this, Twitter claims to have a developer network made up of 750,000 developers around the world.