Category Archives: business

Google to Create a Business Version of Google+

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With the personal accounts a huge hit, Google has raised its efforts to finish a business version of Google+ and to get it up and running as soon as possible. Google said in a Google+ blog post on Thursday that the cutoff for companies to take part in a Google+ test for business would be Friday at 9 P.M. EDT. Google will select and notify the businesses that will participate in the trial next week after the sign-up is closed.

Businesses can sign up on Google’s site for a chance to be in the trial, but the servers has been so busy that it may take several tries to get through, if you even manage to at all.

This is interesting news, as Google said when they were working with Google+ initially that they probably wouldn’t have a business version of Google+ until late this year. Then, a couple of weeks later, they are stampeding to get both completed and available to everyone.

Google wishes to run tests with the small group of businesses and brands that it chooses for the trial. They wish to see how users interact with the social networking site’s Circles, as well as its news stream functions.

“To the thousands upon thousands of businesses that applied to be a part: THANK YOU!” wrote Christian Oestlien, Google product manager, adding that Google plans to select a diverse group of businesses next week. “We won’t be able to accommodate everyone, but your interest has got us very focused on accelerating our development plans… . We will be communicating with these [new] partners next week, and will let the world know who they are soon thereafter.”

Google has also forewarned that if a business is not part of one selected for the trial, they do not want to see it on Google+ and they will pull it down. Google+ is now currently for individuals only, and the business aspect is being worked on. That being said, they do not want to see any businesses running Google+ as of yet.

“Please note that we are still actively closing profiles that are being used by businesses today,” Oestlien wrote. “Stay engaged on Google+ with your personal account and continue to send us your excellent feedback. We’ll continue to be very proactive in communicating with everyone around our plans for businesses.”

Despite Google trying to tell people to stop setting up business profiles, businesses and brands are still showing up on Google+ in lightning speed and some are getting quite a bit of attention. Ford Motor Company said it’s “experimenting” with Google+ and has asked users how they would like to interact with the company on Google+. PBS has even branded Sesame Street onto Google+, with the Muppet character Count von Count saying “Good morning” to users.

Source: Computerworld

Can it be true?

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Suzanne Choney at MSNBC is hypothesizing that we have reached a point of technological overload.  With the release of the iPad, another portable computing device, Google Buzz, another social networking site, and 3-D TV starting to emerge, people seem to be getting tired of technology changing every other day.  In the 1990s, it seemed that a piece of technology would come out and provide a unique service for a number of years before another piece of technology provided the same service with additional features or at a cheaper price or in some revolutionary new presentation.  Now, it seems that new technology doesn’t even last a year before the supposed next big thing comes out.  So what do you think?  Have we finally reached the pinnacle of technological saturation or are people’s personal checkbooks making us more cautios buyers?

Websites that went away in ’09

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This is another story from Cnet, and it concerns 15 websites that shutdown during the year.  As you might expect, there are a lot of sub-site from Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google, but there was one that was from a smaller company called Splashcast that was initially a way for people to share, legally, multiple media types.  What sunk them was a lack of funds as they got into publishing content and allowing users to chat during hosted TV shows.  It’s almost like they were trying to provide live video casting solutions. Guess they should have waited until they had more solid sponsorship or customer base before expanding.

One Mistake Many Businesses Make

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From small business to big business there is one thing that everyone wants to achieve and that is efficiency.  However, it’s tough to attain efficiency when you have so many people doing the tedious and mundane part of running the business when they should instead be looking to improve application availability – which enables those folks to concentrate on strategic, value added projects.

A small business will grow and becomes more innovative if time is better spent on the more important projects and the time consuming, manually intensive aspects can take car of themselves!