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25 July 2011

Google+ and the potential for Internal Communications

Have you been invited yet?

Google Plus logoUnlike previous attempts by Google to integrate into the social market and crush Facebook, its latest challenge has real potential to disturb the landscape. Google’s aim is to make sharing on the web like sharing in real life and Google+ is making great strides to achieve this.

Its first plus is exclusivity – rather than opening a free-for-all platform, Google has made this invite-only and called it a “project”. This means the message spreads virally and people make up their own minds. Within its first two weeks, membership passed 10 million and now reports are suggesting they are closer to 18 million members.

The platform itself has done what any sensible social platform should do: it has pulled the best bits out of another, re-branded them, and filled in the original platform’s gaps.

A stand out feature of Google+ is the concept of circles: you put your life’s social circles into, well, circles, meaning that people can share and distribute things with targeted groups rather than everyone they know. No more panicking about sharing information with colleagues that is meant for friends. What’s more, people can be placed in more than one circle.

Although Google is yet to release business pages, companies are still looking to be part of the Google+ experience – and we are one of them.

So as we learn more about the platform and understand its potential we thought we would share our first impressions of how it can be used for internal communications.

Google+ could be good for internal communications for 3 reasons:

  • Circles – Group your connections in one place and pick and choose who you share information with: clients, colleagues, friends, targets and so on.
  • Hangouts – A great place for a network call and a chance to interact differently with your colleagues.
  • Business pages – Although yet to be introduced Google will soon role out their business pages which will ultimately help businesses establish another presence on the web where they can share ideas, thoughts and news as well as potentially improve on the companies SEO.

So much potential, and this is only the start. We thought we would join the Google revolution sooner rather than later – if you fancy hanging out, give us a shout.