Companies and News Organizations Gravitate To Google Plus

Brand Page Field Test To Start In About Two Weeks

Updated 8 July 2011, 3.00 am
It’s only slightly more than a week old, yet news organizations and major companies have jumped into the new sandbox that is Google+ despite the fact that the field trial is supposed to be for “people”:

Let me be clear – and I’m sorry if this wasn’t obvious – we are not currently supporting brands, organizations, and non-human entities in the Google+ field trial.

That action is coming to a screeching halt. Christian Oestlien, The Google+ Project Ads Lead, explains (emphasis added):

How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands, and we want to create an optimal experience for both. We have a great team of engineers actively building an amazing Google+ experience for businesses, and we will have something to show the world later this year.

The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses. We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles. […]

If you represent a “non-user entity” (e.g. business, organization, place, team, etc.) and would like to apply for consideration in our limited program (and be amongst the first to be alerted when the business product launches) you can sign up here:

http://goo.gl/zq95C

To be clear, Google is asking that the field trial be composed of individuals posting as themselves. Whether you represent a media company, a non-profit, a university, a F500 firm …. Google is asking that those business accounts wait. In my view, that would apply to political campaigns as well — in other words, Newt Gingrich posting as himself would be one thing but posts from a Newt Gingrich campaign (were there one) should also be prohibited.

With that caveat, here are some links … they may or may not work.

“Some of the existing profiles might be included in our testing,” said Oestlien. “We’ll be reviewing everything on a case by case basis once we have a sense for user interest.”

Nevertheless, many of the news-related links work as of this writing, as do both Ford links and MTV.

Update: According to AdAge, Google+ brand pages will be here in than two weeks … for test partners (buried in the story). Oestlien:

We’d like to see they’ve been really engaged with their audience with all the social sources out there. Also brands that are active on YouTube. What we want to do is avoid a land-grab situation — that’s why this is very much a test phase.

If you’re interested, the application process closes early next week.

 

Traditional News Organizations (MSM)

• Austin American-Statesman : no posts
• Canadian Business : posting articles from the website
• Chicago Sun-Times : honoring Google’s request to “hold off on jumping in to Plus while they work on an optimized platform for us”
• KOMU News (TV) : put Google Plus Hangouts on live television
• National Journal : posting articles from the website
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch : currently not working

Non-Traditional News Organizations (New Media)

• ABC News Radio : currently not working
• Breaking News : curated news from around the globe
• CNET : currently not working
• Lost Remote : currently not working  posting articles from the website
• Mashable : posting articles from the website
• The Next Web : posting articles from the website (gone but back)
• Search Engine Land : posting articles from the website

Non-Media Companies

• Ford
• Ford Europe
• MTV