A report by UK market research firm Trendstream updated its Global Web Index this week which showed how well Google‘s strategy is working in terms of getting users engaged in its social networks. According to GWI, Google+ is now the second largest social network in terms of active users and YouTube, included for the first time in its index is now third. The report estimates Facebook‘s active users in December 2012 at 693 million, compared to 343 million for Google+. The post does not break out the number of YouTube active users, but from the chart it appears to be approximately 280 million.

There is obviously significant overlap between Google+ and YouTube in terms of users, so those two numbers cannot merely be added up to say the Google, Inc. is only 70 million active users behind Facebook, but if all active YouTube users become active Google+ users (something not so difficult for Google to engineer) it would likely add a significant amount to those 343 million.

But Google+ is a ghost town, right? Well, undoubtably Facebook’s active users are moreactive than Google+’s (I haven’t seen any stats on this yet), but all active user counts are suspect, Facebook’s included. Every action that you take logged in as a social network’s user can make you an “active user.” Facebook has made its accounts a virtual single sign-in for a a big chunk of the web, and Google is catching up, particularly when it changed its account system last year to merge all of its products, YouTube and Docs included, into singular accounts.

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