by Jesse Noyes | Tweet this From the moment Google unveiled its social networking platform, Google+, marketers and brand managers have been asking, “ When will brand pages be available? ” Google’s answer is today …kind of. There’s a reason I hedge Google’s claim that brand pages are open for business. Like a Facebook brand page, Google pages allow brands to share photos, updates and video. By far, the most exciting feature seems to be the advent of Google+’s Hangouts feature. Direct Tie in Google Search. MORE >>

Google, the owner of YouTube said on Friday that it would not comply with a White House request to remove the video that has set off the violence in the Arab world. Google said the video did not violate its own rules on hate speech, because it was “against the Muslim religion but not Muslim people.” The government foreign policy experts for this region wanted the video to go down but Google said no, except in the cases their own company executives deemed as “delicate.” The theme of my blog is Marketing, Social Media, Humanity. foreign policy. Tweet. MORE >>

PRODUCTIVITY. Enter your email address: May 23rd, 2008 in Productivity. Are You a Productive Reader? But are you productively literate? But too often we read important stuff — how-to manuals, business and personal development guides, science and current affairs treatises, and yes, even personal productivity blogs with the same mindset. Godin — the author of quite a few business books — offers these three tips for reading productively: Commit to making at least three changes in your life as a result of your reading. Google it. MORE >>

My following post was recently featured on Social Media B2B: Most of our B2B clients have staked a claim on Google+, but they don’t invest  in it. They say Google+ is  irrelevant. Recent studies indicate that, while many companies were  asleep at the switch, Google+ has emerged as the killer platform for B2B social  media marketing. B2B marketers need to understand these four reasons that Google+ is the next  killer platform for marketing, and why it should be an important part of your  B2B marketing mix. Google’s Long-term Vision. Google Maps and Local. MORE >>

There is unnecessary unrest that has been buffeting the launch of Google’s newest online social network, Google Plus, and the reason for that is simple:  Google was forced to launch G+ because Twitter blocked Google’s real-time and direct access to Twitter updates. This What has been happening even before the real names scandal is the scandal that any and all Google Plus profiles that were not simply real users with real names were deleted en masse. Until Google Plus, there was only one true source for real-time news and real-time trends: Twitter. MORE >>