Google Plus is Here

New data from Experian Hitwise show a dramatic increase in traffic over the week since the service opened to everyone. Visits to Google Plus increased by 1269% last week. The site received 15 million U.S. visits, up from 1.1 million the week before. Google Plus went from ranking 54th in Hitwise's Social Networking and Forums category to ranking 8th in just one week.

That's not all the traffic, either. These stats don't include mobile users or visits from the ubiquitous black Google toolbar. The data still show that Google Plus is disproportionately comprised of "influencers" and "early adopters" compared to other social networks, but the removal of invitations seems to have jump-started visits to the service. According to Paul Allen's estimates, which have been on track in the past, Google Plus currently has around 43 million users.

Advantages of google plus

Google Plus was built with ease of use and privacy always at the front of the designers’ minds. Where you create lists in Facebook, you create circles in Google. Creating circles is as simple as a drag and drop feature. Using circles allows you to know who has access to every post or every picture. The problem with Facebook is that privacy setting change every time Facebook changes their design or adds features. This takes meticulous micro management to make sure your private information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Take some fun photos and forget to upload them to Facebook? Not an issue with Google Plus. With instant upload, Google will automatically upload your phone pictures to a private album in your Google Plus account. From there, you can select the album they belong in. Don’t want pictures automatically uploaded? No problem! This feature is easily switched off. Since pictures can be added directly to circles, you don’t have to worry about people seeing what you don’t want them to see.

Need a face to face? With Google Plus, you can use the Hang Out feature to initiate a video chat of up to 25 people. The best part of the feature is you don’t have to be “friends” with everyone you invite. Different invitee’s can invite people from their circles, even if you don’t have them in one of yours.

Although in its infancy, Google Plus has shown it can be a threat to Facebook. So far, Google is easier to use, easier to customize and offers users a more secure social environment than Facebook.
To learn how to use Google Plus in your marketing plan, contact TurnKey Creations today at 319.752.1155.