Google+ to roll out biz profiles
Oon YeohPublished: Jul 21, 2011 4:15 AM | Updated: Jul 21, 2011 6:45 AM
Social media is primarily used for social purposes (hence its name) but companies have also flocked to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook in order to reach out to their target market.
Social media is primarily used for social purposes (hence its name) but companies have also flocked to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook in order to reach out to their target market.
In the case of Twitter, there’s one service for all. Whether you’re an individual or an organisation, you use the same Twitter platform. Facebook, however, took a different track and created ‘Facebook Pages’ for businesses.
The normal Facebook profiles that we all have is meant for sharing stuff with your friends and family while ‘Pages’ are for companies to use for communication, branding and engagement purposes.
Facebook is pretty strict about keeping the two services separate. It’s actually against Facebook policy to use normal profiles for business purposes (those that are reported or found out will have such profiles deleted). If you want to promote a business on Facebook, you are supposed to use ‘Pages’.
It seems Google+, the latest entry in the social media scene, is taking the same route as Facebook when it comes to businesses.
The company has confirmed that it will be rolling out business profiles for Google+ later in the year and has asked companies to not use Google+ until the business version is launched.
That hasn't stopped companies and organizations from doing so. A simple search led me to two prominent companies, Ford Motor Company (top) and Mashable (bottom), that have set up Google+ profiles.
For some reason, these profiles have not been taken down yet. Perhaps they are too prominent (and thus valuable) to take down? Or maybe the Google filtering team have not discovered them yet (unlikely).
Whatever the case, if you are a business owner, you should not bother with setting up your company profile on Google+ just yet because it is official Google policy that this is not allowed.
“We are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users,” said Christian Oestlien, the advertising chief at Google+, in a company post. “Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”
Information is scarce about what the business version will offer but you can bet that it will be quite different from the personal version (right). “The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses,” Oestlien wrote, without elaborating. “We just ask for your patience while we build it.”
Profiles and ‘Pages’ similar
One of the biggest drawbacks of ‘Facebook Pages’, which is meant for business use, is that it is almost identical to Facebook profiles in terms of looks and features. There are some differences of course. Profiles, for example, allow up to 5,000 friends while ‘Pages’ has no limit on the number of people who can ‘Like’ it. ‘Pages’ also offers something called Insights which is an analytical tool for you to assess the traffic that your ‘Page’ has generated.
But profiles and ‘Pages’ are sufficiently similar that at first glance, it’s quite hard to tell whether you're looking at a profile or a ‘Page’.
Google+, hopefully, won’t make that same mistake. One thing it can do that differentiates it significantly from ‘Pages’ is to allow for easier customisation. That means instead of requiring companies to code using proprietary language - FBML, in the case of Facebook - Google+ could allow companies to use well-established languages like HTML and CSS.
Another key feature that Google+ could offer that ‘Pages’ currently doesn’t is e-commerce functionality. For sure, there are some ‘Pages’ that have e-commerce capabilities but those were customised using third-party tools. This can be very costly to develop and not affordable for small businesses.
If Google+ is able to offer an idiot-proof e-commerce module that’s integrated seamlessly with its Google Checkout payment system, it would really be a killer app that should see companies flocking to it.
Many companies like to maintain blogs for messages that are longer than what a ‘status update’ can contain. ‘Pages’ currently doesn't have any native blogging tools. The closest you can find to this is its ‘Notes’ app, which is really very basic. Google, in contrast, owns Blogger, one of the earliest blogging tools around.
The list could go on and there are already plenty of speculations online about what Google+ business profiles should be like in terms of features and functionalities. Whatever it turns out to be, it’s surely something that small businesses, in particular, should look forward to.
Time was when building a corporate website would cost an arm and a leg. These days, it’s no longer very expensive to build a website but it still costs some money and there’s also the hosting and bandwidth fees. For many small companies, that’s still too much of a barrier to adoption.
With the advent of social media - in the form of Twitter and Facebook, and now with Google+ - small companies can now have a meaningful and effective online presence at no cost. Isn’t the march of technology great?
OON YEOH is a new media consultant. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/oonyeoh.
In the case of Twitter, there’s one service for all. Whether you’re an individual or an organisation, you use the same Twitter platform. Facebook, however, took a different track and created ‘Facebook Pages’ for businesses.
The normal Facebook profiles that we all have is meant for sharing stuff with your friends and family while ‘Pages’ are for companies to use for communication, branding and engagement purposes.
Facebook is pretty strict about keeping the two services separate. It’s actually against Facebook policy to use normal profiles for business purposes (those that are reported or found out will have such profiles deleted). If you want to promote a business on Facebook, you are supposed to use ‘Pages’.
It seems Google+, the latest entry in the social media scene, is taking the same route as Facebook when it comes to businesses. The company has confirmed that it will be rolling out business profiles for Google+ later in the year and has asked companies to not use Google+ until the business version is launched.
That hasn't stopped companies and organizations from doing so. A simple search led me to two prominent companies, Ford Motor Company (top) and Mashable (bottom), that have set up Google+ profiles.
For some reason, these profiles have not been taken down yet. Perhaps they are too prominent (and thus valuable) to take down? Or maybe the Google filtering team have not discovered them yet (unlikely). Whatever the case, if you are a business owner, you should not bother with setting up your company profile on Google+ just yet because it is official Google policy that this is not allowed.
“We are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users,” said Christian Oestlien, the advertising chief at Google+, in a company post. “Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”
Information is scarce about what the business version will offer but you can bet that it will be quite different from the personal version (right). “The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses,” Oestlien wrote, without elaborating. “We just ask for your patience while we build it.”Profiles and ‘Pages’ similar
One of the biggest drawbacks of ‘Facebook Pages’, which is meant for business use, is that it is almost identical to Facebook profiles in terms of looks and features. There are some differences of course. Profiles, for example, allow up to 5,000 friends while ‘Pages’ has no limit on the number of people who can ‘Like’ it. ‘Pages’ also offers something called Insights which is an analytical tool for you to assess the traffic that your ‘Page’ has generated.
But profiles and ‘Pages’ are sufficiently similar that at first glance, it’s quite hard to tell whether you're looking at a profile or a ‘Page’.
Google+, hopefully, won’t make that same mistake. One thing it can do that differentiates it significantly from ‘Pages’ is to allow for easier customisation. That means instead of requiring companies to code using proprietary language - FBML, in the case of Facebook - Google+ could allow companies to use well-established languages like HTML and CSS.
Another key feature that Google+ could offer that ‘Pages’ currently doesn’t is e-commerce functionality. For sure, there are some ‘Pages’ that have e-commerce capabilities but those were customised using third-party tools. This can be very costly to develop and not affordable for small businesses.
If Google+ is able to offer an idiot-proof e-commerce module that’s integrated seamlessly with its Google Checkout payment system, it would really be a killer app that should see companies flocking to it.
Many companies like to maintain blogs for messages that are longer than what a ‘status update’ can contain. ‘Pages’ currently doesn't have any native blogging tools. The closest you can find to this is its ‘Notes’ app, which is really very basic. Google, in contrast, owns Blogger, one of the earliest blogging tools around.
The list could go on and there are already plenty of speculations online about what Google+ business profiles should be like in terms of features and functionalities. Whatever it turns out to be, it’s surely something that small businesses, in particular, should look forward to.
Time was when building a corporate website would cost an arm and a leg. These days, it’s no longer very expensive to build a website but it still costs some money and there’s also the hosting and bandwidth fees. For many small companies, that’s still too much of a barrier to adoption.
With the advent of social media - in the form of Twitter and Facebook, and now with Google+ - small companies can now have a meaningful and effective online presence at no cost. Isn’t the march of technology great?
OON YEOH is a new media consultant. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/oonyeoh.
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