Google+, Day 13: Cross-Posting from Google+ to Facebook and Twitter
August 18, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
30 Days With Google+: Day 13
Google+ may be the newest kid on the social networking block, but it is not the only kid. I have multiple social networks that I maintain and update, and sometimes it can be tedious and redundant to post the same links or information on multiple networks. For today’s 30 Days With Google+ journey, I am taking a look at some methods for cross-posting content from Google+ to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
I found one creative method of sharing posts with Facebook compliments of EnBeeOne3.com. The site explains how I can automatically update Facebook when I post to Google+ by taking advantage of the system Google+ has in place for letting me add people who aren’t even on Google+ by putting the email address in a Circle.
It is nice to at least have an option to cross-post from Google+ to other social networks.posting status updates via email into a Circle, any Google+ posts shared with that Circle will be emailed to the Facebook address and subsequently posted to Facebook.
Voila! Well, almost. I wrote a post on Google+ that I shared with my “Post to Facebook” Circle with my Facebook email address. It did, in fact, cross-post, but the original Google+ post was a link to a PCWorld article with a couple sentences of commentary, and all that showed up on Facebook was the first 10 words or so followed by ellipses, and no link to the rest of my text or the PCWorld content.
As creative as that solution is, it’s not the most elegant, it only does Facebook, and apparently it doesn’t work very well. There are some third-party solutions that allow you to send Twitter tweets via email as well, but TheNextWeb.com pointed me in the direction of something even better–the Publish Sync extension for the Chrome Web browser.
The article from TheNextWeb.com describes some shady behavior about automatically spamming your social networks, but apparently the developers took the hint and resolved that faux pas. The Publish Sync extension requires that I use the Chrome browser of course, but it enables me to automatically cross-post from Google+ to Facebook and Twitter, or from Twitter to Facebook, or whatever direction suits my needs–at least in theory.
I ran into two issues trying to use it. First, the Google+ functionality is apparently not working right now. In Facebook or Twitter when I start a new post there are checkboxes that appear that let me select which connected social networks to cross-post to. On Google+ those checkboxes are missing. Reading the forums for the extension, I am not the only one having this issue and the developers are supposedly working on it.
My second issue is with Twitter. The Publish Sync extension would not be very useful to me when it comes to cross-posting a Twitter tweet because it requires that I tweet from the actual Twitter website. I never use the Twitter website (I use Tweetdeck), so a Chrome extension that relies on me using the website isn’t helpful.
The nice thing about Publish Sync is that it lets me choose on a post by post, or tweet by tweet basis whether or not I want to cross-post the information and to which social networks. In general, I don’t agree with simply cross-posting everything between different social networks–if I am just saying the same thing then it’s redundant and one of the duplicate networks should be eliminated. However, it is nice to have the option to cross-post on a limited basis when it seems warranted.
These are only two of many solutions circulating out there. A quick Google search turns up a plethora of options, but they all seem sort of like hacks and workarounds. I assume that as Google+ matures and moves from limited “Field Trial” mode to publicly available social network that mainstream tools like Tweetdeck will incorporate Google+ and give me a platform for sharing with whichever networks I choose.
Read the last “30 Days” series: 30 Days With the iPad
Day 12: Following People in Google+
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Is Google+ Starting to Get on Facebook’s Nerves?
August 18, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Google’s social network is putting competitive pressure on Facebook, which may be a good thing for Facebook users and third-party developers
There’s no question that Google+ has quickly become the most successful social offering that Google has ever released, racking up more than 25 million users in a matter of weeks. That may still be light-years behind Facebook’s user base of more than 750 million, but the search company’s social platform seems to be getting Facebook’s attention, particularly with the recent launch of Google+ social games, such as Angry Birds. While a Facebook executive recently dismissed the Google network as inconsequential, it seems clear the competition is keeping Facebook awake at night—which may be a good thing.
It was fairly easy for Facebook to dismiss Google’s earlier social efforts such as Buzz and Wave, in much the same way it was easy for users to dismiss them. Neither one managed to gain much traction outside a small group of Google fans and early adopters, in part because Buzz suffered from some serious privacy concerns early on (after it automatically added people from a user’s e-mail address book without making it clear this would happen) and Wave was just too complicated and the purpose of the service was unclear. Although Buzz continues to exist—for now—Wave has been shut down.
Google+ Is Everything Google’s Other Social Efforts Weren’t
Google+, by contrast, has been hailed by many users as everything Google’s previous social efforts weren’t: attractively designed, easy to use, and with some appealing features such as the use of Circles to separate a user’s social graph into different groups. The company’s approach to the use of pseudonyms has gotten criticism from users—including us—but apart from that, it has been well-received. And according to ComScore, Google+ got to 25 million users more than 10 times faster than any other service in the history of social networking (although some are already complaining it is a ghost town).
Last week, Google upped the ante by adding social games including the popular Angry Birds and Bejeweled to the platform. And that entry into social games definitely got Facebook’s attention, since games are one of the big drivers of revenue and engagement on the larger social network, thanks to a partnership with social-gaming leader Zynga.
Not only did Facebook quickly tweak its game-related features to make them more appealing to developers such as Zynga but a Facebook executive also seemed downright snippy when asked about this new competitor at a recent game-industry event, according to a report in Fortune magazine. In talking about Google’s offer to developers—the search company is offering to take only 5 percent of the proceeds from games, in contrast to Facebook’s 30 percent—Director of Game Partnerships Sean Ryan said: “Google is at 5 percent because they don’t have any users.”
Like McDonald’s and Starbucks
Ryan went on to describe Google’s effort as being similar to McDonald’s getting into coffee in an attempt to compete with Starbucks (although that might not be the best comparison from Facebook’s point of view, since a number of analysts believe McDonald’s entry into the coffee business put substantial competitive pressure on Starbucks). And the Facebook executive described Google’s launch as a copycat move, saying the company had managed to “emulate aspects of our system, which … they have the right to do.”
Games aren’t the only element of Google+ that seems to be getting on Facebook’s nerves. There have also been reports—which have been circulated on Google’s network by the company’s head of social, Vic Gundotra—that invitation links to Google+ posted on users’ Facebook pages are not showing up. Given the history of tension between the two companies over issues such as the exporting of contact information, there has been speculation that Facebook might be blocking these links, but the social network says it isn’t aware of any such blocking.