Google+ social network membership tops 10 million

Google chief Larry Page said Thursday that the Internet giant's freshly launched Google+ social network already has more than 10 million members.

"Over 10 million people have joined Google-Plus," Page said during a quarterly earnings conference call. "That is a great achievement for the team."

He added that more than a billion items are shared daily at Google+.

Google launched its rival to Facebook on June 28, with membership limited to invitation-only while the service remains in a test phase.

"Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it," Google's senior vice president for engineering Vic Gundotra said in a blog post about the social-networking initiative.

Unveiling Google+, Gundotra stressed the ability it gives users to separate online friends and family into different "Circles," or networks, and to share information only with members of a particular circle.

"We'd like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software," he said.

One of the criticisms of Facebook is that updates are shared with all of one's friends unless a user has gone through a relatively complicated process to create separate Facebook Groups.

"Not all relationships are created equal," Gundotra said. "So in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents, and almost nothing with our boss.

Google+ is located at plus.google.com.

(c) 2011 AFP