Almost half a million Egyptians are listed on Google+, making it Africa's biggest country for the social network, according to Plusdemographics.com.
The Web site displays detailed statistics of people using Google's social network in countries across the globe. According to its African statistics, Egypt has 478 449 people listed on Google's social network, SA follows with 466 828 profiles, while Zimbabwe has 30 237 people on “G+”.
Plusdemographics also has figures for each country of the number of people who are single or married, male or female, and even their employers.
Just over 60% of Egyptians on Google+, for example, are listed as single, while approximately 2.5% of South Africans on the social network work for fixed-line operator Telkom. In Zimbabwe, 77.43% of people using the service in that country are male.
The Web site bases it information on 90 million public profiles of the 100 million Google+ users. The search giant's social network, though, still has much ground to gain before it is a serious competitor for Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg's social networking Web site has 800 million registered members, according to a document the company filed in preparation for its listing on the New York Stock Exchange, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Nevertheless, as almost one million people in Egypt and South Africa are on G+, the social network's relevance as a marketing tool for African businesses to communicate brand messages is becoming more important, say experts.
“You need to stake out your place and you need be very cognisant of Google as a search engine and how activity on G+ will affect organic search results,” says Walter Pike, of South African marketing company PiKE.
“If you are trusted in your referrals and you use it intelligently, you will show up in Google organic search results,” says Pike.
Professional photographer Heather McCann has over 8 000 followers on Google+ who are able to view her portfolio of images she has captured.
“I don't use Twitter. Facebook is great for keeping in touch with family and friends, but I find it can be boring,” she says. “I just love Google+ and the way my images are shown.
“There are a lot of excellent photographers worldwide who I have 'circled' and I see some amazing work, which is encouraging, and they don't mind sharing advice on how they took the shot. I would say it is a much more professional platform,” she adds.
Google+ is expected to continue to experience growth as it is estimated to reach 400 million users by the end of the year, according the Businessinsider.com.