Google today launched a few major updates on Google+ making the service finally available for Google Apps users, which also means that businesses are now able to use it.
At the same time Google launched several new features for Google+. The most important one of those changes is “Google+ Ripples”, which will allow you to see how posts get shared around Google+ in a graphic way. Google also introduces “What’s hot” their own version of trending topics. (more…)
I was involved in the State of Search radio show this Tuesday night with Bas and Roy, something I have been fortunate to have been involved with on a number of occasions. During the conversation, we got onto the subject of Google+ something which has had a lot of noise over the last couple of weeks for a number of reasons not limited to Google engineers venting with others outlining the perceived decline in Google+ takeup over recent months.
I have to say, I was one of those that was very exciting at the thought of Google+. My personal thoughts are that the hangouts and Huddles are a great idea – yet something stops me from fully engaging with the product. I know I am not the only one – talking to many colleagues and industry peers it is clearly apparent that take off isn’t what many of us thought it would be – and the general public appear to be of a similar perception. I should add at this point that I am not saying Google+ is on its last legs – just that it certainly isn’t fulfilling its potential. (more…)
Google Plus is here, and whether you like it or not, it is here to stay. Everything points in the direction that Google has taken up Plus as being the core of their ‘new way of working’. Google Plus is their “New Pagerank”.
Google Plus is the core for all the data Google gathers about its users. With that data they will try to make the internet as personal as possible. I’ve explained this right after the launch of Google Plus.
But for Google to get that data and to make that data as valuable as possible they need people to use Plus, or at least to take notice of Google Plus. And even though the number of registered users is high, the activity still seems low. So Google is doing everything in their power to push Plus right into our faces. And that pushing is an indication of what is coming. (more…)
Google is cleaning up. The online giant is again saying goodbye to several products they developed over the past years. Many of the products came from the illustrious 80/20 rule where Googlers are able to work on projects they thought of themselves for 20% of their time.
Other products are bought products, mainly intended to catch up with some of the developments on the web, like for example one of the products getting killed, Jaiku. In this latest fall-clean up Google has decided to drop some social related products, Buzz and Jaiku for example, to really focus on Google+. (more…)
We probably don’t know half of all the stuff Google and Facebook know of us. And we probably even don’t want to know how much they know, because it would scare the **** out of us all.
This infograpghic at AllFacebook takes a look at who is worse, Google+ or Facebook. (more…)
When Google last week opened up its API’s I predicted that pretty soon we would also be seeing a search within Google+. Something which has strangely been missing from the start. If it wasn’t going to be Google itself, with the API surely a developer would come up with the search functionality pretty soon, after all we saw the same happening with the share functionality on Google Plus.
But this time Google didn’t let the developers beat them. The search box on top of Google Plus, which used to only search for people now searches through Google+. (more…)
Many people have been complaining about the speed in which Google Plus is developing itself. No search, not many new features and most of all: no API. Maybe that will now change rapidly, as Google starting today is launching the first of the Google API’s.
With this move Google hopes to get developers to develop for Google+. Without a doubt we will now soon see applications which can search through Google+ and existing applications like Twitter clients can now start to incorporate Google Plus into their tools. (more…)
Many people seem to believe that Google+ is meant as a valid alternative to Facebook, that Google is serious about competing with Zuckerberg’s brainchild, and that Larry and Sergei are devoted to gaining a solid foothold in the social media world.
But I believe all that is just a happy side-effect of Google’s real goal: to eventually replace the link graph with the social graph in its search ranking algorithm.
Google’s web search was built upon the premise that the amount and quality of links pointing to a website was a sign of its value and importance. This premise has since been so mauled and mangled by spammers and, yes, SEOs, that it is no longer true. Links are no longer an entirely trustworthy metric. (more…)
Coverage of SMX New York 2011 is provided by our guest author Jackie Hole.
The second session of the day in the Advanced Track was hosted by 3 speakers:
The Google +1 Button has been around for a while and is slowly but surely starting to get more characteristics of the like/share button from Facebook. After Google released the feature in which you could share posts using the +1 button, they now also release an annotation option and the possibility to customize the snippet which goes with it.
Members of the Google+ Platform Preview group can already get the code and implement it on their site. We added the annotation option to our share button on the left side. That means that if you hover over the +1 button, you will see a list of contacts who already +1’d the page. (more…)
An interesting (possible) job-hiring by Google became clear yesterday. It seems as if Google is about to hire Florian Rohrweck, an Austrian blogger and developer. On his blog he mentions he is about to sign a contract with the search giant.
So why is this special? Because Rohrweck got his job by digging into Google+ source code and revealing Google+ features, even some which have not been launched yet. Google figured the best way to shut him up was hiring him. (more…)
Google believes Google Plus should be a reflection of the real world. And in the real world there are people in your environment which you may not want to see or hear all the time. So you ignore them.
Google today launched a new feature on Google Plus which does just that: ignore people. You won’t hear them, you won’t see them. But they will be there. It is a ‘light’ version of blocking.
Where blocking limits the way people interact with you, “Ignore” means people will still see your updates, can comment on your posts and is still ‘in the loop’ so to speak. (more…)
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