7 ms·
Official Release of Google+ Pages
- yanw 15y agoAre brand pages necessary? I think I prefer G+ as a human only network, not sure products fit into the circles analogy.
- eth 15y agoAgreed. I appreciated G+ because it was different, not made for brands, and purposely excluded brands. Whatever they have to do to push new streams of ad rev though...
- VikingCoder 15y agoYes, they're necessary, so you can tell the difference. Companies were already making G+ Profiles, even though it was against the terms of use.
- abraham 15y agoIf you don't want to interact with brands then you don't have to follow any.
- m3koval 15y agoNow we know for sure why Google removed the "+" operator: it's used for the "direct connect feature." E.g. if you search for +pepsi you're redirected to Pepsi's Google+ page.
- tmcw 15y agoIt's like AOL keywords 2k11!
- jamesgeck0 15y agoThis is one of the few changes to a Google product that I can think of which was clearly made because someone in marketing wanted it, not because an engineer or designer wanted it.
- celticjames 15y ago> you can build relationships with all the things you care about - from local businesses to global brands Do people in marketing even hear themselves? I'm going to be charitable and assume this is ad copy aimed at other marketers because no real human has ever wished they could build a relationship with a global brand. Now if you excuse me, I need to go like the Guinness page on facebook.
- icandoitbetter 15y agohttp://tpdsaa.tumblr.com/ http://tpdsaa.tumblr.com/
- Kylekramer 15y agoWhile funny, couldn't you do that with jargon from any industry? Like Things Real People Don't Say About User Experience: "This operating system's use of Fitts's Law means I am more productive!" Or Things Real People Don't Say About Their Health: "I must be in the readaptation stage as I realize I am only breathing due to this machine!"
- pak 15y agoIt's more funny with TPDSAA because the images look like the fake testimonials you would find in actual advertisements. So there's a meta-ness to it.
- celticjames 15y agoSome extra scorn via Bill Hicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo
- masklinn 15y agoWell, Google's bread-and-butter product is ads, so it'd make sense that their copy is targeted towards marketers: they're the one who build ad campaigns.
- gcl2 15y ago
- OoTheNigerian 15y agoHow does this differ from a Google Plus page? I am trying hard but I cannot see it.
- sudonim 15y agoPepsi's google+ id is: 111883881632877146615 I can't imagine them putting that in a subway ad.
- ceejayoz 15y agoThey'll just use something like http://pepsi.com/+ http://pepsi.com/+ as a redirect, or use http://gplus.to/ http://gplus.to/.
- masonhensley 15y agoI can only assume that non technical users would balk at clicking through to +1 this https://plus.google.com/106281600940449244340 https://plus.google.com/106281600940449244340 vs plus.google.com/cowboys But then again I wonder what the traffic breakdown of Facebook page likes is. 25% external (ie dallas cowboys site) 25% direct to their facebook page, 40% search, 10% newsfeed? (Random numbers) Google could be driving search for pages instead of direct links, I guess that gets an extra page view out of the user's interaction. Just a random guess.
- sp332 15y agoOn the contrary, non-technical users will click on anything :)
- nextparadigms 15y agoI've noticed a while ago that Google just doesn't get "vanity URL's".
- slig 15y agoIf they're expecting anyone to use the product this decision is beyond moronic. So much for their own recommendation [1]: > For example, if you're searching for information about aviation, a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation will help you decide whether to click that link. A URL like http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1 http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5e..., is much less appealing to users. [1] http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answe...
- tilt 15y agoYou can have a sneakpeek at G+ Pages' creation by deleting the overlaying elements with your inspection tools at https://plus.google.com/pages/create https://plus.google.com/pages/create Looks promising, it integrates with Google Places
- evolution 15y agoreally? Mean, does it allow to create new page?
- tilt 15y agoNope, it didn't allow any operation further than the data insertion/retrieving.
- evolution 15y agoCan you tell what manipulations are needed exactly to make it work?
- tilt 15y agoI think they just rolled it out for me, so I can't actually tell you which were the interested DIVs. Anyway, just point your cursor on the overlays and "inspect" them. Then delete the nodes.
- jen_h 15y agoJust went through the effort of registering a support account to create a page to be greeted with, "Google Pages isn't ready for everyone." (It did take me a good long while to find that tiny text at the bottom of the page.) Meanwhile, the support account is now being added to a bunch of users' circles automatically and recommended to thousands of others. Fabulous. Only comforted by the fact that I used a Support Account to test this, instead of my real corporate account, thus angering the Google "Real Name" gods...so in good news, maybe the profile will be automatically deleted anyway.
- jen_h 15y agoUpdate: I went ahead and disabled Google Plus for my domain & users for now. I look forward to using Google+ from an Apps account once there's a way to exclude users' address books from the G+ suggestion engine (should be a check box on signup, no?).
- lubujackson 15y agoIt is as if Google is desperately trying to become old Yahoo.
- badclient 15y agoHow long do you give before G+ officially dies? I give it another year, tops. I do think it's pretty much dead unofficially, credit to a mediocre product and a suicidal(or non-existent) adoption strategy.
- Pewpewarrows 15y agoI sincerely doubt the service will die in a "year, tops" with 40 million users, as of the last numbers we've heard. Do you have any actual evidence or data to back up your opinion, or are you merely spouting random personal bias?
- badclient 15y agoI signed up for G+ when it launched. I haven't been on it in months. And yet I am sure I am one of those 40M members cited by Google. That 40M figure is garbage. 40M may have tried G+; but a very small percentage are hooked to it or like it. G+ won't tell us what percentage that is but it's a pretty solid bet when a company refuses to share engagement metrics, it is because they don't look good.
- Pewpewarrows 15y agoExactly: random personal bias. Just because you haven't been back there doesn't mean anything about the rest of the user base. The same could be said about anyone that's signed up for Facebook or Twitter and are part of their 600 and 100 million user statistics, respectively. I'm as curious to see engagement metrics as much as the next guy, but I'm not reading tea leaves to predict doom and destruction for not happening to release those numbers just 6 weeks after the site came out of beta. You're trying too hard.
- zach 15y agoSo this is what the + is for now. Go ahead, enter [+pepsi] in the Google Chrome omnibox. This looks like the first time Google's fundamental search syntax has been changed to support a new product. Right? Wow. So I guess now we know how meaningful the "plus" is. It at first seemed like a generic advertising term, like "Google Deluxe". Then when we started using G+, it seemed like it was just their riff on the @ syntax. Now we know it goes all the way to the input box on www.google.com, the very center of the Google user experience. Now, queries starting with a plus basically shunt you to Google+ instead of web search. To the average Google user, it's like their country's phone company created new phone numbers that start with #. Can they do that? They just did. The upshot is that Google has officially carved out part of the web search query universe just for a namespace of its own. Remember this day.
- rachelbythebay 15y agoAOL keywords all over again?
- andyking 15y agoEntering "+pepsi" into my copy of Chrome, or into the Google Search page itself, just does a standard Google search for Pepsi. I'm in the UK. Is this US-only functionality?
- zach 15y agoI should clarify that it's not in quotes, my fault for not using bracket syntax (now edited). But for me here in California, [+pepsi] entered in either box takes me to Pepsi's Google+ page — and crucially, not to pepsi.com.
- gorog 15y agoWell, Google real customers are advertisers. They sure need to welcome their customers in their network.
- dholowiski 15y agoThat's right, and think about what that makes you, the consumer. Hint - you're the thing being sold to Google's customers.
- Antelope 15y agoAdmittedly off-topic, but when is Google going to improve the design of their internal blogs? Yeah, I know that sort of thing isn't their focus, but this is just painful. At first glance it looks like an unprofessional, unpolished website. If nothing else, a bit more line-height and some strategically-placed padding!
- mbreese 15y agoI don't have an example handy, but some of the internal blogs were testing out a new set of templates for Blogger that were very slick looking.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- RobAtticus 15y agoGmail blog: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/ http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/
- PJones 15y agoThe Gmail blog is one example. http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/p/as-you-may-have-noticed-gmail-blog-has.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/p/as-you-may-have-noticed-gmai...
- donatzsky 15y agoAnd they don't work - at all - without JavaScript.
- pferde 15y agoThat's the Brave New Web. Also, the company google pages linked to in the article only display here as empty white page without js, even though html source shows a lot of html and javascript. Or is it my adblock preemptively blocking entire company page? :)
- Andrex 15y ago
- ivanzhao 15y agoFollowing is the signal of death.
- erickhill 15y ago"Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face." That seems almost too touchy-feely. The possibilities do make the mind wander, however.
- rmason 15y agoI followed the link to create a page and after logging in I got a message 'the pages wasn't ready for everyone yet'. So I guess the marketers got ahead of the implementers once again.
- jonpaul 15y agoDoes anyone find it a bit ironic that these page URLs are NOT search engine friendly? Just a long string id... seriously Google? Maybe not irony because they own the search engine... but still makes you scratch your head wondering why.
- missing_cipher 15y agoSame with the extensions, for example: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejnkaeblpdcamcioiiabclakabcbjmbl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejnkaeblpdcamcioii... I don't understand why.
- Raphael 15y agoThat's actually Icelandic.
- Andrex 15y agoFor developers, the extension IDs are actually somewhat important. Plus, handling canonical URLs in a massive store could be a bit hairy (Android Market does it because all developers declare their own IDs, Chrome extension IDs are made by Chrome itself.)
- tomkarlo 15y agoIn what respect are they not "search engine friendly"? Being human-readable or slugged doesn't necessarily make URLs more search engine friendly, nor does it necessarily improve their rank: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-u...
- jonpaul 15y agoIt's my understanding that making your URLs human friendly makes them more search engine friendly IF the url contains relevant keywords to the page. The link you provided is just about dynamic vs static urls, which is not what I'm referring to. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...
- whackberry 15y agoGoogle wants to become the WWW itself. Is this good?
- alexknight 15y agoPeople said the same thing about Facebook, but I very much doubt that's their focus. Some seem to confuse mass user bases with somehow "becoming the Internet itself." Frankly, that argument is bizarre to me and a tad hyperbolic.
- saturdaysaint 15y agoIt will be very interesting to see how, say, a given restaurant's Google Plus page appears in search results compared to its Yelp and/or Facebook equivalents. If Google highlights the + page in search results with rich page information (eg daily specials, updates, etc.), Yelp and Facebook have a problem.
- abuzzooz 15y agoIsn't this precisely the kind of thing that will trigger anti-competition lawsuits?
- savramescu 15y agoIf Facebook or someone else is unhappy with this they can just make their own search engine. I don't see an issue with Google promoting another Google product on it's own search page.
- playhard 15y agoDear Google, I'm not going to switch from Facebook to you if you copy what Facebook does! Google plus should give us experience which Facebook does not give. Google plus is just adding up missing features. Google, try to come up with a killer social experience which we have never seen before. That is how you get users stick to your social site. if you are again giving us the same old shit, you are losing to Facebook.
- RobAtticus 15y agoI don't know, I think the idea of Hangouts with the Google+ Pages is kind of neat. Maybe it won't work for giant corps like Pepsi, but smaller companies might find it an interesting way to engage fans? Maybe demo things? I don't know, seems interesting.
- sp332 15y agoYoutube integration is a killer feature for me.
- gojomo 15y agoIn the NYTimes coverage (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/google-lets-in-the-corporations/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/google-lets-in-the-...), Horowitz says: “Over time, I expect ‘+Pepsi’ to emerge on every can, on TV spots and on the Web site and become a cult phenomenon…Over a couple of quarters, brands will learn to utilize this.” I somewhat doubt that, unless Google offers big cross-promotional subsidies. Which they might, but is sort of the antithesis of a 'cult phenomenon'. I do find it interesting that Google, the infovore behemoth that killed various 'reserved keyword' schemes (as at AOL and RealNames, and even to some extent domain names) with flexible full-text-search is now reintroducing reserved keywords with 'Direct Connect'.
- SkyMarshal 15y agoThere's no way I'll be 'Liking' things on my G+ account. I've ruined my FB account by liking every damn thing on the Internet that interested me, and since the FB Like button debuted I've accumulated over 1000 likes. They now combine to fill my news feed with 99% noise, drowning out the posts from my real friends. Since I don't spend every second of the day monitoring my FB account, posts from real friends get pushed below the fold before the next time I login, and I miss them. To make matters worse, FB has apparently disabled the Unlike button from the settings page that allows you to see all your likes in one dialog, which is apparently the closest thing to a bulk unlike available (you still have to click Unlike for each page, but at least they're all there in a convenient list). So the only way to unlike stuff is apparently to visit each page, scroll down to the Unlike button in the bottom of the left menu, click it, then proceed to do the same for the next 1000+ pages. Not. I'm just switching over G+ instead. Even with G+ I've made the mistake of subscribing to a bunch of shared circles, and there's an impedance mismatch between the topic of the circles, and the Public posts of the people in them. Even if I subscribe to say, a Python Developers circle, I still get people's public posts of pictures of dinner last night, etc., that is just more noise. At least G+ makes it easy to fix the problem via unsubscribing, but what they could really use is the ability to add filters to circles based on hashtags. So if someone in my Python circle makes a public post that doesn't have #python, #pypy, #tornado, or some other python-related hastag that I've specified in my Python circle filter, that post won't show up in my feed. But after having learned the hard way twice, I can guarantee I at least won't be adding more spammy businesses and whatnot to my G+ feed.
- donatzsky 15y agoJust click the little down-arrow in the upper-right corner of a post, and you'll get various options for hiding posts and unsubscribing. This is, by the way, something that has been possible for quite some time now.
- cookiecaper 15y agoOn Facebook there's a "Hide all by this poster..." or similarly-worded option in the context menu in the top-right of the post (appears on hover as a globe). This is how I stop myself from seeing updates from things I hate on my falsified profile.
- gregw100 15y agoLuckily Google hasn't quite yet nailed what I'm trying to do with my startup. If you want to contribute to a project in this space that could potentially transform the way we interact with businesses, contact me at contactsocialmarket@gmail.com. It would help if you know PHP. I'm more business-minded than technical. I already have a prototype built and am willing to work out an equity deal if you are interested. Time is of the essence, as it's only a matter of time before somebody wakes up to what I'm doing. This is a huge opportunity, but I don't have the technical skills myself to get the project off the ground. Sorry for spamming, but I don't know where else to go to find quality programmers who have the same entrepreneurial spirit as me.
- pbreit 15y agoWould have killed them to come up with a name other than "Pages"?
- bryogenic 15y agoAnyone else getting a new favicon? I was just getting used to the + one, now its an orange g+ that does not look very nice. https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/faviconr.ico https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/faviconr.ico
- johnyzee 15y agoGoogle+ sucks so far, and the stuff they are adding does nothing to improve it, just adds more cruft. Lately I am seeing a big "What's hot on Google+" section on top of the feed, showing antiquated Youtube memes from people I don't know. No way to remove it. They are obviously trying hard to appeal to the mainstream audience (Hang out with Kermit and Ms. Piggy!). It seems weird for Google, unauthentic somehow. Their core 'fans', if that word applies, are engineers - I wonder if they wouldn't be better served seeding Google+ with the geek community and letting that user base evangelize the service.
- sherr 15y agoIt's about time but surely quite a bit half-baked ... Right now, there's no concept of having page "administrators", so the person who creates the page is the only one who can post to it. Also, no transfer of "ownership". Both these things are "coming soon" apparently but make the whole experience a bit suboptimal right now.