Google+ is trying even harder in 2013 to catch up with Facebook and they plan on doing it by making connections you may not like.
According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal,
Some users of Google’s services are startled to learn how far the integration can reach. Sam Ford, a 26-year-old Navy petty officer, says he signed up for Google+ on his smartphone because it would let him automatically upload new photos to a Google+ folder—one that he kept private. Later, he says, he was surprised to see that his Google+ profile page—which includes his name—was tied to a software review that he wrote recently on the Google Play online store.
Google is “trying too hard to compete with Facebook, and if people aren’t going to share willingly, they’ll make them share unwillingly,” he says.
While Facebook is way ahead of Google+ in every metric for measuring social networking popularity, Google has the ability to catch up rather quickly, even though you may not like the way they do it.
Life is much easier for brands that are trying to promote themselves locally through their dealer network when there is one dominate player in social media, Facebook. It’s relatively easy now to provide great content in your ad builder for dealers to post to Facebook, with no publication costs for the dealers and plenty of exposure for your content.
Soon it may be a little more complicated if Google+ grows substantially and we now have to deal with two major players presenting social content to customers.
The integration has helped increase Google+ usage. Google last month said 235 million people used Google+ features—such as clicking on a “+1” button, similar to Facebook’s “Like” button—across Google’s sites, up from 150 million in late June.
The good news is that both platforms are free of publication costs and this competition will certainly make them even better for local advertising over time.
Google+, better make that connection whether you like it or not.