Google

Launching the Brand Pages and interweaving Google’s other properties with Google+ has helped the site record its third largest week in terms of total US visits for the week ending Nov. 12, 2011, receiving more than 6.8 million total US visits. The data analyzed by Hitwise also finds that the average visit time increased 15% in October vs. September 2011. This comes as a great piece of news for the Google’s management at the time when critics had literally written Google+ off. The traffic will probably increase even more when brands start to add more followers on their accounts. Currently, only a handful of premium [...]

Finally the painful wait is over. Google+ gets its own version of Facebook Pages and it is now up to businesses to setup profiles. If you already own a Facebook Page, you will find Google+ Pages experience very similar. The layout, the images and the admin options appear to have been heavily influenced by Facebook Pages. But setting up a brand Page is a lot easier on Google+. So the big question is:  Should you or should you not create a Google+ Page for your company? When any new service opens up, people rush in to create profiles for themselves without knowing [...]

Google+ has just launched Pages for brands and businesses. Vic Gundodtra,  Senior Vice President of Engineering writes” So far Google+ has focused on connecting people with other people. But we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands—so today we’re rolling out Google+ Pages worldwide. ” First reaction: Looks way too much like Facebook Page! But is visually more appealing. We will get a detailed report on the feature. Until then, read full info here from Google+ Here are some of the Pages:   

Google+ is planning to allow pseudonyms on the site, as confirmed by its head Vic Gundotra. Speaking at the Web 2.0 conference, Vic hinted that Google+ may very well soon allow users to use pseudonyms and perhaps even allow users to open multiple accounts. The site has pretty much stalled to a point where it has not been adding new users. Chitika has been monitoring the site over a month and has found out that the number of active users has actually declined over last couple of weeks. The first report was widely reported in the press. The site had lost 60% of [...]

It was bound to happen. Google is shutting down Google Buzz in a few weeks from now. The company announced the news on its blog. Buzz never received the kind of hype or the attention that Google+ received from the media outlets. To be frank, it wasn’t a great product from Google — some even called it a rip-off of Twitter. In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, [...]

The whipping boy of tech bloggers is now being backed by confirmed data. In its third quarterly results, Google announced that its social networking site Google+ has crossed the 4O million figure.  ”Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark. People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!”, announced Larry Page. The site has come under severe criticism from several media outlets for failing to hold onto users after it opened to public few weeks ago. The controversy started after Daily Mail posted an article slamming Google+ for losing 60% [...]

Topsy has launched a separate search engine for Google+ and it uses public data from Google+ API. While Google+ already has its parent search engine at place, there are few features that make Topsy’s version of search relatively better. First off, the UI sports a traditional search engine look. This helps you to easily navigate through the links making search a better experience. Google on the other hand displays entire posts in its search results. The sidebar of Topsy has links that filter and sort the search results based on: Time when they were posted Videos, Web and Experts and; [...]

I fail to understand Google’s management and its seriousness towards its social product Google+. But before delving deep into the details of Google+, lets first examine why Orkut failed to take-off. Last year, I wrote a post that really underscored the reason why Google’ first social attempt fizzled out. The article cites a statement by an ex-Google employee named Aaron B Iba, who points out the exact reason why Orkut failed as a social product. I worked at Google in 2005 and briefly on the Orkut team.  I encountered an environment that viewed social networking as a frivolous form of [...]

I am no Google+ hater, in fact I use it on a daily basis. But there is a reason to believe I’ll stop visiting the site — and like me — many others will soon  follow. So what brought me to Google+ at first place? Well, it was a Google product after all — and as an ardent fan of their other products like Docs, Gmail and Reader, I was too curious to try out their new baby. Google+ boasted of unique features – features that were not heard of on any other social networking site — take Hangout and Circles [...]