In the battle of the social networking giants, Google+ has pipped Twitter to become the number two social platform. The news will be welcomed by the company as when Google+ launched, people were skeptical of the social platform's long-term growth.

Even though Google+ still reels behind Facebook, which occupied the numero uno spot, the search giant has much to cheer about as its YouTube came in at number three.

The data is courtesy Global Web Index (GWI), a UK-based market research firm. The report showcases the "shift in usage from localised social platforms to global ones with huge growth for Twitter, Google+ and Facebook."

"Google+, who despite being branded a failure or ghost town by large portions of the media, grew in terms of active usage by 27% to 343m users to become the number 2 social platform," noted the GWI report.

Per the report, 51 percent use Facebook, 25 percent use Google+, and 21 percent use Twitter

Event though Twitter tied with YouTube at number three, it had the strongest growth at 40 percent (across 31 monitored markets which represent nearly 90 percent of the world's Internet users).

The GWI report also reveals that Facebook has been able to combat saturation and what it terms "Facebook Fatigue" and managed to achieve 33 percent growth. The report also opined that Facebook's claim of 1 billion users is on target.

"2012 saw Facebook shrug off the potential for Facebook fatigue and saturation in a spectacular way with active users growing 33% to 693m users globally," noted GWI.

Whether Google+ can close in on the gap with Facebook in the near future remains to be seen, but given Facebook's popularity and its stranglehold over the social domain, it seems unlikely.