Last Week in Search: New Google+ Features, YouTube Goes Premium & Google TV Gets an Upgrade
Another week, another set of new Google+ features. This week Google let their Google Apps accounts in on the fun, meaning those with business Google App accounts can now use the same account for Google+. The search giant was criticised during Google+’s beta and again when it went public for not integrating paying Google Apps accounts into Google+. With their primarily business oriented Apps accounts now integrated with Google’s search product, Google+ is well positioned to continue adding users to its quickly growing service.
Google also added a few smaller features including a new photo editing system that brings an Instagram-like quality to Google+ photos and trending posts that work in tandem with the real-time search Google+ added a couple of weeks back. While Google+’s constant feature improvement is notable, the tight integration between these seemingly disparate features is even more impressive.
Google’s also brought over Wave’s Playback feature into a new analytics tool for Google+ named Ripples. Ripples are a visual representation of how your posts are shared across the Google+ ecosystem, utilising the circles friend-grouping motif to explore who is sharing your content. Ripples can also be played back at a later time, providing great insight into when your content is more likely to be shared, who the tastemakers are in your industry and how popular your posts are on Google+. While Ripples only provide information on sharing metrics, a fully-featured social analytics suite in the same vein that includes +1’s, comments, engagement and impressions would make Google+ very appealing to brands when brand pages are rolled out.
More news in the world of Google came later in the week on the entertainment front. The often-criticised Google TV is up for a refreshing over the next few days with an all-new interface that clears up the old cluttered Google TV interface with a new Android-styled minimalist design. Google TV’s search product has been beefed up as in the video below, allowing you to find the content you’re looking for faster and more intuitively. The refresh also comes with a new version of YouTube exclusive to the Google TV platform as well as Android Market support. According to Google the update will be available from today.
Google also announced premium YouTube channels curated with original content from the likes of Ashton Kutcher, Shaq, Amy Poehler, IGN, The Wall Street Journal and many more last week. Not long after it’s launch in May last year, Google TV had the wind knocked out of its sails when big media blocked the product from its streaming services, leaving the product dead in the water. With the creation of original YouTube channels, Google’s will have a constant source of premium content available for it’s platforms, making the Google-centric lounge room a much more interesting place.
That’s it for Last Week in Search, see you next week!
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
