Facebook Staff On Google+: How They’re Using It

There has been a great deal of talk about whether Facebook should be scared of Google+, whether Google+ is the next Facebook, etc. etc. etc. Facebook has in fact shown some signs of concern, though Google+ is far from replacing Facebook for the majority of users, at least at this early point in the service’s existence.

Still, it is interesting that hundreds of Facebook users have Google+ accounts. Are they simply checking out the competition? Just seeing what all the fuss is about? Do they really like it and use it frequently? It probably just depends on the user.

It’s not exactly unheard of for staffers of one web service to use a competing web service. We’ve seen plenty of Facebookers on Twitter, plenty of Twitterers on Facebook, Googlers on both, etc. Most of them are probably on LinkedIn as well. Is it a big deal that Facebook people are using Google+? Even Mark Zuckerberg himself has a profile. No it’s not that big a deal.

It is, however, interesting to observe how the people running the world’s largest social network are interacting with the new kid on the block from an existing and very large competitor.

Despite having nearly 400,000 followers, Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t shared a single message (publicly anyway).

anyway).

That hasn’t stopped many of his employees from sharing, however.

Some are using it as a promotional tool. For example, Facebook Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik posted, “As an educator and Facebook’s Journalist Program Manager, I’ve been thinking about how Facebook as a reporting tool fits into the journalism curricula. So I’ve put together a document titled “Facebook + Journalism 101″ that other professors can use to integrate into their syllabi.”

He then links to the document.

Facebook’s Blake Ross has used Google+ to encourage others to add a colleague to their circles. This was shared by Pedram Keyani, who also used Google+ to link to an article about how Google+ handles your data (“outing the fox in the henhouse” apparently), and note that Tom Anderson (of your-first-friend-on-MySpace fame) is blowing up his stream. “If Google isn’t paying him yet, they should,” he said, adding a smiley face.

Facebook’s Nathan Borror used Google Check-ins through Google+ to check into Facebook Offices. Inanother update, he simply wrote, “Poke.”

One person responded, “That’s the good thing about Google+, no poking.”

Facebook’s Rohit Dhawan used Google+ to post some family video.

Facebook’s Rob Goodlatte used it to ask about tourist attractions in the Bay area.

Facebook’s Sam Lessin used it to say that he was with Sergey Brin. Now that’s interesting. No follow up details unfortunately.

Facebook’s Ankur Pansari wrote, “Dear creepy Google Plus followers, please identify yourselves! How did you find my profile?”

Facebook’s Cameron Marlow wrote, “I just unlinked my Facebook account from G+ since I was seeing an increase in random friend requests. I guess this is a sign that these two worlds don’t really mix well.”

Facebook’s Nick Schrock wrote, “I’ve been debating what to do with all my google+ peeps who have me in circles. I think y’all should fan the Brogramming page on facebook. If you want to know what you are getting into read this quora answer: http://b.qr.ae/o1i7ss

It’s clear that Google+ is just getting started, and while unique visitors and time spent on site were down(at least in the U.S.), it still shows a great deal of promise as a legitimate entry into the social media space. It will be interesting to see if a significant number of Facebook employees sticks around for the long haul. source: webpronews.com

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Google+ Can Drive Traffic To Your Site

Google+ is still very young, but it’s already becoming a significant traffic source for some sites.
Are you seeing any traffic to your site from Google+? Let us know.



“I was quite surprised to find how strong Google+ was as a social media traffic source driver,” Larry Kim, Founder and CTO of WordStream, told WebProNews. “Google+ beat-out LinkedIn, and was even closing in [on] Twitter and Facebook!”
He put together a case study looking at this a little bit. “Like any case study, I can only speak for my company’s own experiences, but nevertheless, I found the results of my case study to be quite surprising.”
For the case study, Kim compiled web analytics data for WordStream’s blog for the week of July 18 – July 24, which he says was an unusually high traffic week for the firm. He analyzed which social networks drove the most referral traffic, and Facebook took first place, accounting for 47% of visitors. Twitter was second at 27.51% and Google+ came in third at 15.42% of visitors. LinkedIn trailed with 9.81%.
As we’ve discussed before, LinkedIn can be a solid traffic source, but the fact that Google+ has been around for so little time, and is capable of driving a significant amount of traffic, before the product is even open to the public, is remarkable.


Here’s an infographic representing Kim’s findings:




Kim’s not the only one to see Google+ making a contribution to referrals. We’ve seen some first-hand as well. Ryan Spoon wrote at BusinessInsider the other day, that Google+ had already become the #3 referring site to his site.


“Of course this has real implications for marketers & brands and how they should think about leveraging / interacting on Google Plus,” he wrote. “Furthermore, it is a powerful position for Google (should the trend continue) because they can begin connecting the properties (SEO, SEM, Plus, .com)… which in turn will cause marketers (and their budgets) to dedicate themselves further to Google.”


“Google+, despite only being around for 1 month – and even then, being released in a limited ‘field testing’ mode, drove more traffic to our blog than LinkedIn – it was roughly a third of our Facebook traffic and over half of our Twitter traffic,” said Kim. “This was a huge surprise given how many Facebook fans and Twitter followers we’ve accumulated over the last several years, and given that at the time of this writing, I don’t even have a company presence on Google+ yet, or any Google +1 buttons on our website. (Though plans are in the works for both!)”


Kim brings up a couple of good points there. When Google launches its business profiles, it’s going to potentially be a huge part of how sites are able to gain more traffic from Google+. For that matter, we’re still wondering if Google will eventually include further integration of the +1 button into Google+ itself (for example, allowing it to share content to the stream like the Facebook Like Button) or merge Google Buzz with Google+ (which would mean this type of sharing via the Buzz buttons). Either would also potentially lead the way to increased traffic on heavily shared content.


Kim speculates that reasons why Google+’s estimated 20 million users could beat LinkedIn’s 100 million users as a traffic driver may have to do with the lack of spam that has appeared on the service so far and a higher level of engagement among users. In terms of spam, I’m sure more will come in time. I’ve already seen a report of comment spam on the network.


Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land raises some good points about how building your following on Google+ may serve to help you in search rankings, based on Google’s use of social signals and personalized search features.


He notes that he saw a search result show him for him that was marked as being shared by Ford on Google+. That’s Google’e social search in action.


“Until recently, the social connections that Google Social Search uses have been mostly actual people,” Sullivan explains. “While brands were allowed to have Google Profiles until March of this year, few of them did. That meant relatively few brands were available for direct connections through Google.”


“It was possible to connect with brands in Google Social Search if you followed brand profiles on Twitter, Facebook or some other ways,” he adds. “However, it was fairly unusual for me to spot that something was getting a boost in Google’s search results through that type of connection.”


The point is that brands will soon (in the coming months) have Google+ profiles, and the more people that have your brand added to their Circles will probably mean you’ll have a better chance in ranking better for those people.


I’ll take it a step further and suggest that having your brand in these people’s circles may mean additional +1′s on your content. Google has already said flat out that it looks at +1 info as a ranking signal. If you’re putting your content in front of your circles, they may follow your links and +1 your content on your site, or they may +1 your actual Google+ post (which contains the link to that content).


It’s probably as good a time as ever to be a big brand.
Do you think Google+ is going to be a critical traffic driver for sites? Tell us what you think.
Source: webpronews.com

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Google Search Gets a Tablet Makeover

A new Google design was spotted earlier this week. Now, Google has officially announced it. It’s not a complete Google redesign, however. It’s a redesign of Google for the tablet experience.

“As part of our effort to evolve the Google design and experience, we’ve improved the www.google.com search experience on tablets,” says software engineer Xiaorui Gan. “We’ve simplified the layout of search results pages and increased the size of page contents like text, buttons and other touch targets to make it faster and easier to browse and interact with search results in portrait or landscape view.”

“The search button located below the search box provides quick access to specific types of results like Images, Videos, Places, Shopping and more,” explains Gan. “Just tap to open the search menu and select an option to see results in one category. For image results, we focused on improvements that enhance the viewing experience such as enlarged image previews, continuous scroll, and faster loading of image thumbnails.”

Here’s what it looks like





The new look is rolling out in the coming days for Ipad, and tablets that utilize Android 3.1 and above. It will be available in 36 languages. You will see it by simply going to google.com in the tablet browser. source: webpronews.com

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