Google+ Traffic Jumps Over 1200 Percent: Facebook Tops but Competition Heats Up

Google+ went public on Sept. 20 and the same week it witnessed an unprecedented traffic jump - 1200 percent. Some of the new Facebook changes could also push thousands of users over to the search giant's new toy.

Google's motto is don't be evil, but Facebook's new layout and labrynthian privacy settings might be enough to send people scurrying away from the No.1 social network and into the arms of the largest database in the world.

So is Google+ the new Facebook or is Facebook the new Twitter? Many functions on all three platforms seem to be converging, so it's a matter of personal experience. Facebook now knows more about you than ever. Don't want to overshare? Try Twitter. Too much info in a less organized way, you say; maybe you'll prefer Google+.

The newly available social media space landed almost 15 million hits in just a week to become the eighth largest social network in the world, the web analytics company Experian Hitwise said. Google+ ranked behind MySpace and LinkedIn in that eighth spot and Facebook was ranked number one by a huge margin over number two YouTube.

Furthermore, Google+ traffic jumped by over 1200 percent the week ending Sept. 24 and even briefly overtook Twitter in the number three spot. Facebook gets nearly 65 percent of the Social Networking and Forums visits, Hitwise said on its blog, and YouTube gets about 20 percent. Number three Twitter gets just over one percent of those visits with Google+ seeing only 0.55 percent of total visits.

Meanwhile, the live video messaging service called Hangouts, now available in Google+, will go more or less head to head with Facebook's new Skype integration. Facebook only has that available for Mac users, but if they do roll it out for everybody, it would easily outdo the Google+ Hangouts function.

Do you hang with your peeps on Google+ or Facebook? Still prefer texting? Let us know in the comments section.