Answering critics who said Google+ was among the walking dead, Google this week announced that it has some 100 million active users among the 400 million that have signed up for the social network that celebrated its first birthday in June.
The positive numbers from Google echo a late July report from comScore, which noted that worldwide, the number of Google+ visitors jumped from 66.7 million to 110.7 million - 66% - between November 2011 and June.
During the same time in the US, comScore said the number of Google+ users rose by 82%, from 15.2 million to 27.7 million.
Of course, Google+ remains far from the heights of Facebook, which claims some 950 million users, but it's a healthy place for Google to be, analysts say.
"It was only a year ago that we opened public sign-up, and we couldn't have imagined that so many people would join in just 12 months," wrote Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of engineering, in a blog post. "While Google+ is all about creating a better experience across Google, it's also a destination."
Gundotra also announced in his post that Google has acquired Nik Software, a company largely known for the popular Instagram-like photo editing app, Snapseed.
The acquisition comes on the heels of Facebook's purchase of Instagram, another wildly popular photo app.
IDG News Service