For all those of you who thought Google+ is just another social networking platform, there’s actually a lot more that you can do with this service. Besides communicating with your peers and business contacts, G+ gives you the option to integrate any existing Google Tools, which you were probably using, with the social media platform. So, there you go. For using Google’s latest offering to social media, you don’t need to familiarize yourself with any different set of tools or any such applications.

Integration between Google’s already-popular tools, Gmail, Google Docs, just to name a few, and G+ is seamless. With this feature, commercial entities do not need to change their way of conducting business. It’s more like, you keep doing what you have been doing till date, but results just seem to multiply manifold. As for social media enthusiasts outside the  commercial world, G+ comes as a gateway to more online engagement. Grouping contacts becomes easy if you use one or more Google Tools, and then there’s G+ Circles to make the entire process easier.

Will Google Tools and other productivity applications, required and used by us each day, get their own versions of G+? Well, this is something only biggies working in Google can answer. But the way things are poised, it looks like the G+ team will certainly roll out separate versions of tools and productivity applications powered by Google, sooner than what you may have anticipated. Now, here’s something coming straight from the officials at Google -

Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product for Google Apps, has said, “the demand for Plus to integrate with Google Apps is the single biggest bit of feedback we got.”

There you have it, all in a nutshell for you. Put on your thinking caps and start speculating.

And, of course, come back to us for more updates on G+!

Social media networks have always been waging an undeclared war against one another, without any among those gaining an upper hand for long. For every LinkedIn, there has always been a Twitter, and every Friendster has been challenged at its own game by a Hi5. However, with over 750 million users, Facebook, at one point of time, seemed to be right at the top of the social media game. The situation is still like that, but for how long is now a matter of speculation, thanks to a little project carried out by search engine giant Google, namely Google+.

Started a little more than a couple months ago, Google+ already has more than 32 million users. Of course, the gargantuan population figure of Facebook won’t be beaten so easily, but given the constant rise in the popularity of Google+, you never know what the future might hold. While other social media websites like Orkut, LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace have already lost to Facebook, Google+ seems hell bent on beating the social media giant in its own game. Only time can influence the outcome of this epic social media battle now.

The moment you think of social networking, you cannot help but think of Google+. The newest social media service managed to amass over 25 million users in just 4 weeks of launch.

There are many views about the newest kid on the social media block, but what do the social media gurus think? Let’s quickly have a look -

Facebook CEO and founder, Mark Zuckerberg, isn’t too worried. He feels Google+’s primary challenge would be to build up its user base and convince people to actually spend a large portion of their social media time on it.

Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, seems to have studied various features of Google+ in detail. He thinks Google’s social media platform is a great effort, and even echoed the growing consensus that Google+ is better than other popular social networking services being used nowadays. He also added that Google+ would be the favorite social media channel for celebrities to communicate with their fans.

Finally, there is Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace, who says that the success of Google+ as a social networking community strongly depends on user preferences. Mr. Anderson also believes Google+ Circles are more like email distribution lists, but with the crispness of Twitter, and of course, made more user-friendly with better commenting options.

Come back to us for more tidbits on Google+!

Google Plus seems to be ready to take on social media giants like Facebook on their home turf. The social media division of the search engine giant has made 16 interactive games available for users, including the phenomenal Angry Birds. The games will be playable in either single player or multiplayer modes (wherever applicable), and very soon may be available to mobile users as game apps, as well.

In the initial stages, only a handful of lucky users of the social media network will be able to access these games via a special icon on their profile pages. As time progresses, however, the titles will obviously be available to every user. In fact, Google has revealed its plans to allow cross-platform support for these games, thereby ensuring that mobile users can play a round of game just about any time with their friends, even if the latter are using computers.

Could this act as just another nail on the coffin for other social media websites? Only time can tell, but one thing is for sure. Google Plus is definitely here to stay, and given the possibilities they can afford to explore (integrating office suites with social media, for instance), it is likely to be around for quite a long time to come.

Just 3 weeks old, it has over 20 million users, and the number is rising steeply each day. Naturally, social media gurus are busy debating whether Google+ can become a real competitor to Facebook and Twitter in the long run. Digital marketers too are reshaping their strategies as they find new ways to use Google+.

Google+ expertly incorporates some of the best features of both Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s being used not just as a platform to catch up with your friends and family, but its unique “Circles” feature allows it to be used as a powerful professional social media tool as well. People are already hiring on Google+ (after all, there are 20 million potential candidates in there already), so here’s how you can use this tool to grab a share of the pie.

• Make sure your profile is complete. All your education details, work experiences (if any), strengths, and so forth should be there for potential employers to find. Once this is done, state that you are looking for work in your status. However, you need to attract attention among a virtual ocean of updates and messages, so keep it short, sweet and interesting. And of course, don’t sound desperate! It never makes a good impression.

• Manage your contacts with the help of Circles. Keep all your professional contacts together in separate Circles. When you post updates about your job search, see to it that Circles which contain potential employers are receiving your messages. At the same time, remember that sharing unprofessional content with your professional contacts is never wise. It’ll damage your image.

For more tidbits on Google+, stay tuned to our blog!