Google+ is Now Second-Largest Social Network

Google+ has beaten out Twitter to become the world's second-largest social network, according to a report.

Trendstream's Global Web Index, a U.K. market research team, reported that Google's social network grew 27 percent and surpassed Twitter to be the globe's second-largest social network with 343 million active users in the last quarter of 2012. Now only Facebook, with close to a billion users, has a larger reach.

Active users means users that have used or contributed to the social network in the last month, according to Trendstream. The numbers may also have been goosed by Google's new policy of entwining its services with the social network, such as when a person signs up for a Gmail account he or she is also given a Google+ profile.

In third place is Google's YouTube, the search titan's popular video sharing site with about 300 million active users. Twitter, with 288 million active users, is now ranked fourth. Ranked fifth in the study was our particular favorite, "None of the above," meaning that the respondents weren't regular users of any particular social network.

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