While we continue to await the ability to create brand pages on Google Plus, teases across our website inviting local Palm Beach Post readers to add me to their circles, as the paper’s social media editor, remain active.
Still, only a trickle of readers are taking the bait so far: Just 54 locals have added me to their Google+ circles, up only 4 people in the past month. We may see more interaction when official brand pages are enabled.
If G+ is able to eventually rival Facebook’s spot as a mainstream social network, it has the potential to offer better search capabilities and better analytics. Not to mention its innovative features like intimate video-chat Hangouts.
But that still remains a big “if,” despite its rapid growth. (Google Plus garnered 25 million users in less than a month, and while some data suggest most of the early adopters were young men in the technology field, more students have been hopping aboard, suggesting the Google Plus demographic may be heading in a more mainstream direction.)
Meanwhile, the monster that is Facebook shows no sign of slowing. The site now gets 1 trillion pageviews a month worldwide, according to DoubleClick.
Facebook has also been scrambling to improve its privacy controls and sharing features, two of the touted advantages of G+. Another recent Facebook improvement is its news feed, which now groups posts by topic, giving it a clear advantage over Google Plus’ still-cluttered feed showing repeated posts.
