Have you heard the buzz about Google’s new social network that’s being rolled out via invitation? Wired Magazine wrote a great piece about its development and as of this week, invites are starting to spread across the Web.
Many are worried that this will become yet another walled garden to tend, but in the end, if you want to use social networking platforms to market your business, you will want to get familiar with this new platform as soon as possible.
If you have an invite, great! Go check it out. But if you’re still waiting, there’s a few things you can do to hit the ground running once the invite shows up:
- Update your Google Profile. This profile deeply integrates with Google +; populating your “about” page in a similar fashion to Facebook’s “info” page in your profile. The first activity posted for many new beta testers is that they have updated their profile. Why wait for the invite?
- Check out the demo. You can familiarize yourself with many of the features via Google’s demo. Pay special attention to the Circles features as they could end up being the key advantage to this network.
- Download the Android app. You won’t be able to use it yet, but at least it will be ready when you do. An iOS app for the iPhone is in the works as well.
The jury is still out on the how successful this network will be. But, my initial impression is that it’s simple, open, and well executed. Get ready.
