Whether you agree with the Occupy (insert location here) movement or not you can’t deny that they have made a mark. Social media has played a role in that ability to make the desired impact. It seems though that traditional social media outlets like Facebook have reached their limitations with groups like this because of these folks’ desire to have a system that helps privacy rather than is always in the crosshairs regarding the same issue (read: Facebook).

So how do you overcome this issue? Build your own social network of course. A Wired article tells us:

“I don’t want to say we’re making our own Facebook. But, we’re making our own Facebook,” said Ed Knutson, a web and mobile app developer who joined a team of activist-geeks redesigning social networking for the era of global protest.

Paul Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com has made somewhat of a cottage industry out of making predictions about the growth of Google+. As with most analysis of a hot topic it won’t get any attention unless it’s big so Allen has done just that. The chart below shows a 20 million user a month increase based on his methodology.

He then goes even further in his Google+ update he states

Based on the accelerated growth I’m seeing and all the dials and levers Google can still utilize, and the developer ecosystem that will be developed, I predict that 2012 is going to be a breakout year for Google+ and that it will end next year with more than 400 million users.