Has Google+ overtaken Twitter as second most-popular social network?

How much do you use Google+, Google’s social network? More than Facebook? Almost certainly not we’d imagine, unless you call Google’s Mountain View HQ home. How about more than Twitter though? Again unlikely, but that’s what’s being suggested by new stats published by a company called GlobalWebIndex.

The company’s data appears to show Google+ grew by 27% over December 2012, seeing it overtake the global user base numbers of both Twitter and YouTube with 343 million users.

Even more interestingly, these figures relate to active users – not simply those who signed up for Google+ to give it a go and then gave up on it.

It seems mad, given the popularity and user retention of Twitter, but when you consider just how many Google products Google+ is baked into, it begins to sound more plausible. Whether you’re using Gmail or Calendar or any other Google service, you’re bombarded with opportunities to check or interact with your Google+ network, not to mention the fact that any ratings or reviews of Android apps purchased through the Google Play store pass through your Google+ account first. Perhaps we’ve underestimated just how much we passively use Google+ these days, though we’d still take these figures with a pinch of salt.

Click here for an in-depth look at the stats.