Google CEO Larry Page gave a statistic that surprised many people during last week’s quarterly earnings call. He stated that Google+ now has 90 million users, which is double what it had three months ago. But going even further, he claimed that 60 percent of those users are engaged daily, and 80 percent weekly.
 
After being analyzed, it was noted that these users aren’t necessarily engaging with Google+, but any Google service when signed in to their Google+ account. They could just have went to Google.com to use Google Search and have gotten included in the engaging users. Facebook currently has 800 million active users, and 50 percent of them log in each day. Google+ isn’t revealing that kind of information and has stated many times that that type of information doesn’t matter.
 
“If you try to create a Google account from Google’s homepage, you’ll notice that Google redesigned the page, but that’s not all. You’ll now have to create a Gmail account, a Google Profile and you’ll automatically join Google+,” the Google Operating System blog states. “Until now, creating a Google account was quite simple. You could either use an existing e-mail address or create a Gmail account. The redesigned form includes new fields: name, gender (required for Google+) and mobile phone number (not required).”
 
The only exception to this statement is that a Google+ account is not automatically created for users who are under 18 years of age. Otherwise, that is definitely the truth.
 
We understand that Google+ is a lot newer than Facebook so it isn’t quite ready to be a competitor for the popularity of social networking. However, Google’s method for expanding membership captures a large number of “users” who barely ever visit the site. Facebook accounts are only created when the person tries to do so. Google has also had a past reputation of presenting statistics about Google+ usage in a misleading way during its quarterly earnings calls.
 
All in all, Google+ is a great platform which seems to attract more tech-savvy professionals than not. It would be interesting to see the real statistics instead of Google’s misguided ones, but I’m afraid that will likely not happen for quite some time.
 

Google’s social vice president Vic Gundotra stated that Google+ will soon begin allowing people to use pseudonyms. People lobbied against Google’s requirements that people use their real names, and Google folded. However, they did not state when the pseudonyms will be supported.

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit this week, Gundotra said “We plan to support pseudonyms in the future. We’re working on it. It’s coming.”

Google has prevented anonymous members in the past because it wanted to create a network in which it is easy to find friends by their real names, similar to Facebook. If you post a photo on Google+ and “Captain Crunch or Dog Fart comments on it, it changes the atmosphere of the product,” Gundotra said.

“It was largely an issue of developmental priorities. It’s complicated to get this right,” he said. “We want it to be a product where you can discover people you know. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to support other forms of identity. But this is the way we wanted to roll out the service, this is the atmosphere we wanted to set.”

Web 2.0 Summit’s moderator John Battelle noted that “pseudonyms are extremely important to people… Many hackers like to call themselves by their handles and not by their real names.”

Gundotra stated that Google Apps account integration with Google+ is coming soon as well. “That fix is imminent, it’s in a matter of days,” he said. As far as privacy, Gundotra promised not to adopt the “frictionless sharing” model that Facebook is working towards, in which sharing happens by default; though this “problem” has been fixed with Facebook’s latest updates. “We do not believe in over-sharing,” Gundotra said. “We think curation matters. There is a reason every thought in your head does not come out of your mouth.”

Source: Ars Technica

Google+ has started verifying the accounts of high-profile users, such as celebrities, and is publicly flagging them next to the users’ names, the company announced today. When users visit the page of a celebrity or public figure, there will be a checkmark next to the name once it has been verified, similar to Twitter’s official profiles for users. Google also announced that they plan to extend the program to many more users.

Google has recently addressed its new policy regarding fake accounts. They insisted that every Google+ profile must bear the real name of the same person operating the account, something that Facebook brought to attention not too long ago. The verifications will only appear on the profiles of public figures, celebrities, and “people who have been added to a large number of circles,” said Wen-Ai Yu, a member of the Google+ team. Yu also added that Google is “working on expanding this to more people in the future.”

Twitter has already done this for their official pages, but besides tweets, there really isn’t a whole lot to Twitter. Google+ is more closely related to Facebook, so it is definitely important that people are who they say they are, especially in the case of a high-profile user. On a Google+ page that is verified, the checkmark appears next to the verified account will roll out “verified name” in text when moused over. Google did not, however, comment directly on how they verify profile, nor did they say how many circles one has to be in before they are considered high-profile.

Source: Ars Technica