135 Million Users Are Active in Google+ Stream

New stats from Google+“Today Google+ is the fastest-growing network thingy ever” wrote Google Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra in a blog post late last week. Out of the 500 million users that have signed up for Google+, 235 million are “active across Google” (aka +1’ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search), and 135 million are active just in the Google+ stream.

The blog post also announced new features for Google+, showing a continued effort to make the social network more appealing to users.  Google+ has been around for well over a year, but user numbers still pale in comparison to competitor Facebook’s over 1 billion monthly active user base (AdWeek).

New features include Google+ Communities (similar to Facebook Groups) and an Instagram rival for Android devices (already available for iOS) that allows users to share photos on Google+ as well as Facebook, Twitter and email.

What do you think? Is 135 million the only real important number – and will it continue to grow?