Could Facebook go the way of MySpace? A new report indicates that Google+, the new social 
-networking site from the search giant, has acquired about 18 million users in its first three weeks -- a growth rate that could make it a major competitor to the world's largest social-networking site.
That number could be particularly troublesome because of two additional factors. First, Google+ is still in an "invitation only" beta phase, meaning people are actively spreading the invitation around.
The other is a recent survey of customer satisfaction, the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, which found that Facebook has the lowest customer-score of any of the companies measured in the report. Google had one of the highest.
'Surname Model'
The figure of 18 million comes from Paul Allen -- not the Microsoft cofounder, but a statistician who helped found Ancestry.com. Allen reported on his Google+ profile that his "surname model" indicates more than 750,000 people joined the service on Monday alone, bringing the user base so far to slightly under 18 million.
He said his analysis showed there were two days over the last week when more than two million users joined Google+ each day. That would have led to a user population of 20 million, Allen wrote, but there were four days following the single-day record when "only" 948,000 users joined.
Allen pointed out that all this growth is without any real marketing of Google+. Google reaches more than a billion people worldwide through its other properties, including its popular search engine. Allen predicted that, once Google leverages its marketing muscle, the social-networking service is likely to see millions of users joining every day.
Allen admitted his methodology could be flawed to some degree, since he's not measuring log files or using large surveys. Instead, he said, he's "measuring how many Google+ users are of various randomly selected surnames every day."
'Looking Over Its Shoulder'
He uses two sample sizes, one of 100 surnames and the other of 1,000, and set the growth rate -- virtually identical over a four-day period -- at about 28 percent. As a check, Allen noted that Google CEO Larry Page announced on July 14 that Google+ had "over 10 million users." If the 10 million level was reached a day or two before that announcement, Allen said, his model may be "spot on."
Facebook, by contrast, is now approaching three-quarters of a billion users. But Brad Shimmin, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said Facebook "absolutely should be looking over its shoulder at Google+."
He noted that customer satisfaction on Facebook is relatively low, at least in part because of continuing issues about user privacy and data security . Shimmin also pointed out that it's relatively easy for users to move their social-network connections to another site, which is "very dangerous for companies like Facebook."
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