Today On Google+: A Handful Of Helpful Tools, Google+ Officially Over 10 Million Users & Friday Fun!

Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

Over 10M Google+ Users was shared late yesterday by Larry Page, Google’s CEO, in the midst of the quarterly Google earnings call.  This number is still far-removed from Facebook’s 750,000,000+ users, but a good sign that Google+ is gaining momentum.

Google+ WordPress Plugin is an easy way to add your Google+ profile to WordPress.  This plugin creates a “googleCard” that shows your profile picture, name and the number of circles that you are in.

Getting The Google+ Feed For Any Profile is a post submitted to Reddit that shows how to grab public posts from Google+.  This method shows how the profiles are created in JSON and with the proper tweaking your Google+ posts can be pulled into your website.

How To Make Google+ Circles Better is an informative chart that makes a case for “sub-circles,” or circles within circles.  While this may be too complex for novice users, the theory makes a case for the sub-circle model creating a cleaner stream without duplicate content.

The Google+Exodus is an app that was built to send Google+ invites out to your Facebook friends.  Facebook doesn’t let you export your friends, so this tool helps you invite ALL your friends over to Google+.

Google+ Facebook Dilemma is a cartoon from someecards that highlights the issue of blocked Facebook friends on Google+.

Google-, The Anti-Social Network is a satirical video about Google+ that highlights negative feature possibilities.  These features include subtracting friends, a thumbs down button AND a dislike button because “the majority of users updates are pretty depressing.”

21 Google Circles You Can Actually Use is a post by HappyPlace.com that shows what you might name your circles if you were naming truthfully.  My favorite fake circle?  ”Friends of My Dad That Hug Too Long.”

Related Topics: Google: Google+

About The Author: Greg Finn is the Chief Marketing Officer for Cypress North, a company that specializes in social media and search marketing services and web-based application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 6+ years and specializes in Social Media Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn. See more articles by Greg Finn

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Today On Google+: Top Users Hide Followers, Gender Can Be Hidden & How Google+ Is Built!

Below is today’s top news relating to Google+, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

I’m a technical lead on the Google+ team is an “ask me anything conversation” with Google engineer Joseph Smarr, Technical lead for Google+.  Smarr answers 20+ questions on the framework and build of Google+ including questions on Circles usage and whether or not Sergey Brin was used as the silhouette for the generic profile picture.  It was also made clear that  new features are “absolutely on the way.”

Google+ Is Built Using Tools You Can Use Too is a post from highscalability.com that breaks down the technology behind Google+.  In the article many tips are given for mimicking the development environment for Google+, and is a great look at exactly what it takes to run the various elements of +.

Mark Zuckerberg & Top Google Execs Drop, By Choice, From Most Followed On Google+ by Danny Sullivan covers the removal of select internet celebrities and Googlers who dropped off the top listings in Google+.  By hiding follower counts, these users knowingly disappeared from the list, but gained privacy as their follower information is no longer visible.  An argument is also made about it now being “cool” not to show your count.

Google+ Users Can Hide Their Gender was announced on YouTube by Frances Haugen, a Gogole product manager,  as a feature being implemented this week.  Many news outlets and brands (which should not technically be on Google+) have now revered to an “other” gender.  In addition to the hidden gender, gender neutral language will be used for describing any actions taken within Google+.

6 Examples of Google+ Advertising is an article from Search Engine Journal that breaks down 6 powerful marketing scenarios that Google+ could possibly leverage.  From re-marketing to targeted circles, Glenn Gabe looks at how Google+ could monetize their new social service.

A Handy Google+ Cheat Sheet was created by Simon Laustsen.  The sheet contains formatting help, uploading tips, keyboard shortcuts and general information for the new Google+ user.  This was also translated into 12 languages for all you international Google+’ers.

The Complete Video Guide to Google+ is an impressive list of videos from Social Times.  Videos include general overviews to tutorials on specific elements.  Got a question that you haven’t figured out yet, odds are that one of these videos can help you.

How To Use Hangouts in a Business Setting is a post from Bradley Horowitz, Vice President of Product Management at Google, with great conversation in the comments.  Many great suggestions are presented including screen sharing, realtime Docs integration and an increased number of users in a hangout.

More News Organizations Are Using Google+ is a post from Breaking News which documents all of the news organizations on Google+ currently.  Of course all of these news organizations are going against Google’s guidelines, so follow them while you still can!

If Google+ Was a Club is a funny cartoon that depicts one new users experience on Google+.

Related Topics: Google: Google+

About The Author: Greg Finn is the Chief Marketing Officer for Cypress North, a company that specializes in social media and search marketing services and web-based application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 6+ years and specializes in Social Media Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn. See more articles by Greg Finn

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With ‘Millions’ Of Users & Growing, Google+ Set To Power All Google Products

Jul 9, 2011 at 5:26pm ET by Matt McGee

With the Google+ user base already in the millions and growing, Google is planning heavy investments in it and will eventually use Plus as the infrastructure behind all of the company’s products.

Speaking to reporters this week in Idaho, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Google is pleased with the early response to Plus and is planning to use its core identity and “circles” features across Google products.

“The current inclination of the company,” Schmidt said, “is to invest heavily … we test stuff and, when it works, we put a lot more emphasis on it. So, Google+ — all the signs are very positive, so now the whole company is ramping up on top of it.”

Schmidt said he didn’t know the exact number of Google+ users, but said it was in the “millions.” (Early this week, Google+ user Paul Allen — who co-founded Ancestry.com and is now Chief Revenue Officer at FamilyLink.com — used surname distribution data from the US Census Bureau to estimate that Plus had about 1.7 million users as of Monday.)

Plus is still in its infancy, so Schmidt was non-committal about a lot of specifics, but he made repeated references to Google+ being used to power and improve other Google products. Consider these three quotes:

As we move our stuff onto what you think of as Google+, there’s a nice set of product improvements in core search, YouTube, maps, and so forth, which should drive adoption.

We’re trying to use the identity infrastructure to make Google products really interesting. Imagine all of those properties adopting the circles metaphor — Buzz adopting it, Gmail adopting it.

The assumption is that as it grows and ramps up, everything will move over to using the + infrastructure.

Schmidt said that he’s pleased with two particular aspects of the Google+ launch: One, that many people have been unhappy about not having an invite and, two, that many users seem to understand how it differs from Facebook.

You can listen to all of Schmidt’s comments on TechCrunch.

Related Topics: Google: Google+ | Top News

About The Author: Matt McGee is Search Engine Land's Executive News Editor, responsible for overseeing our daily news coverage. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee. See more articles by Matt McGee

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Facebook Hits 750 Million Users; Zuckerberg Yawns

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‘IP Man’ BitTorrent Users Targeted in New Lawsuit

Anti-filesharing lawyer Evan Stone has filed yet another lawsuit on behalf of anime company Funimation.

According to court documents, Stone’s new targets will be individuals who downloaded and shared the movie The Legend Is Born: IP Man.

The law suit, which lists 1,427 John Does, was filed in the Eastern District of Texas Court and demands $150,000 in damages from each individual for infringements which took place between May 13th and May 26th on BitTorrent.

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Source: ‘IP Man’ BitTorrent Users Targeted in New Lawsuit

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133,242 BitTorrent Users Sued In the U.S.

The mass-lawsuits against thousands of alleged P2P users in the U.S. continue to make headlines, even in mainstream news outlets.

Yesterday, CNN wrote an excellent feature on the ongoing cases that some have described as extortion. Although the article itself provides a good overview, the title is a bit off.

“50,000 BitTorrent users sued for alleged illegal downloads,” the CNN article claims, but in reality it’s more than 130,000.

Below are some statistics for the U.S. cases that started last year.

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* The first case was filed January 8 2010 on behalf of Worldwide Film Entertainment and targeted 749 alleged downloaders of The Gray Man. This case was dismissed a few months later.

* 203 cases have been filed in total, most of them dealing with adult content.

* 164 cases are still active.

* 182,078 “Does” were targeted initially, and 133,701 are still at risk (133,242 BitTorrent and 459 ed2k).

* Anti-piracy lawyer John Steele is most active and has filed more than 60 cases.

* Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver (The U.S. Copyright Group) has sued most defendants, more than 90,000.

* The largest case is that of The Hurt Locker, with 24,583 defendants.

* The largest settlement paid to a copyright holder is $250,000.

Source: 133,242 BitTorrent Users Sued In the U.S.

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