Get a Google+ invite!

Google has gotten a lot of positive buzz about its Facebook-challenger Google+ this week, and some of it is definitely well deserved. The fact that so many media experts have started using it is certainly a good sign. However, it is still invitation only. Send an email to per.koch@gmail.com with the headline “Google+ Invite”, and we will send out as many invites as Google allows.

Here are some articles on posts regarding Google+ and other search engine and social media issues.

Google Plus; an overview
P Bradley: Google Plus or Google+ or G+ has now been out and about for roughly a week, and I was fortunate enough to get to play with it quite early on.

Twitter Hits 200 Million Daily Tweets
SE Watch: The 200 million figure has been breached, and the average for the year continues to be impressively high. While there are plenty of facts and figures to blame, including a continuous growth for the service, the 182% increase in mobile use is certainly one of the key factors.

Google Realtime Search Goes Missing
SE Land: Google says: We’ve temporarily disabled google.com/realtime. We’re exploring how to incorporate our recently launched Google+ project into this functionality going forward, so stay tuned. See also: As Deal With Twitter Expires, Google Realtime Search Goes Offline.

Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)
Scobleizer: Most “average users” are locked into Facebook and aren’t willing to consider a new social tool until they hear about it from their friends. Since most of the people who are on Google+ so far are geeks, insiders, social media stars, journalists, and other people (Google admitted tonight they are only accepting people who have strong social graphs so that they can both make sure everyone has a good first experience as well as test out some of the technology before opening it up to a wider audience) the chances normal people (metaphorically speaking, your mom) won’t hear about Google+ from normal users for quite a while.

Twitter Adding Wall Feature in Future
Marketing Pilgrim: The latest comes in the form of an experiment for a small percentage of Twitter accounts with a Facebookesque ‘wall’ for replies to an account right on that account’s profile page.

Facebook and Skype: How Awesome?
Marketing Pilgrim: Facebook has taken another giant step toward making sure you never have to leave the website. It’s a new chat system that is backed by Skype and it’s “awesome.”

Google explains apostrophe in “+1′s”
techradar: Google reasons that “It’s also acceptable to use an apostrophe to add clarity and make sure people read words as intended – for example, when your school teacher tells you to mind your p’s and q’s.”

Apple to decide on Google+ app
BBC: Google has asked Apple to approve a mobile version of its social networking site + (Plus) for iPhones and iPads.

Google’s Blogger & Picasa To Get Renamed Soon: Report
SE Land: Google is planning to rename two of its popular services soon: Blogger will become Google Blogs and Picasa will become Google Photos. But see also GigaOM: No plans to kill the Blogger brand.

Bing and Baidu Team Up for English Search Results
SE Watch: Baidu has announced an agreement with Microsoft for powering searches on the top Chinese search engine. This could be a leg up for Microsoft in a market from which Google has chosen to pull out.

Google+ Profiles Will Be Public: Google To Terminate All Private Profiles After July 31st
SE Land: So if you are looking to use Google+, you must have at least your full name and gender shown publicly to participate.

Google’s Mayer on Attracting Women to Tech
SE Journal: In a recent interview with the Huffington Post for the “Women in Tech” series, Mayer distilled some of her thoughts into some basic points about women and the technologies field.

Google Books: Chugging Right Along
Beyond Search: Search Engine Watch’s article “Google-British Library Partnership to Digitize 250,000 Books” reminded us that Google Books is chugging along. With Google working overtime to showcase itself as a portal and really fascinating legal issues surfacing in France, the once high profile Google goal of gathering the world’s information has drifted into the background.

Read Books Online For Free
About.com: Ever thought of creating a library with thousands of books, and never spending a dime? Sounds impossible, but it’s not! Free books in nearly any subject you can think of abound on the Web, ready to be read, downloaded, and shared.

Illegal UK film downloads up 30%, new figures suggest
BBC: That research, from internet consultancy firm Envisional, indicates that the top five box office movies were illegally downloaded in the UK a total of 1.4 million times last year.

Searching on Google Plus for Librarians
P Bailey: One of the disadvantages of G+ is that it doesn’t have a decent search option inside it. There is a search option, but it’s really only for use with people and their names, rather than for subjects. In order to search G+ content you have to get slightly creative with Google itself.

Search Lion: Innovative Search Results Presentation
Beyond Search: You will want to explore SearchLion.com, a newcomer to the Web search sector. The interface is clean. Enter a query in the search box and click a content type. The search results display. When you click the “open” button, the Web site displays in the white space on the right hand panel of the interface.

Facebook Hits 750 Million Users; Zuckerberg Yawns
SE Land: Zuckerberg said Facebook didn’t bother to report when it hit the 750 million mark because it’s a metric that really doesn’t matter.

Bing Maps refines navigation controls
liveside: Included are new, bolder graphics for zoom and direction changes (at the top right), Road, Bird’s eye, Traffic and the StreetSide icons as top level menu items on the left, and a highlighted breadcrumb area with a “center on your current location” feature (changing from the location breadcrumb on mouseover).

Study Looks at Searcher Verbosity, Ask “Wins”
SE Watch: The study, conducted by Chitika, looked at two metrics to determine how wordy users on a given search site were: the average length of a search query and the percent of the time a search query was over eight words. In the lead on both counts was Ask.com, who had a 4.74 word average query and a 14.74 percent frequency for eight-plus word queries.

Google+ is Growing Like Crazy. Report Coming Monday. Probably More than 4.5 Million Users Already
Paul Allen: On Monday morning I plan to publish my latest research on how many Google+ users there are so far. My model is based on US Census Bureau data about how many people there are in the U.S. with each surname.

Official: The Google Wonder Wheel Is Gone
SE Land: A Google spokesperson has informed Search Engine Land that the Google Wonder Wheel feature has been taken offline. The spokesperson said that the search tool was removed due to the “initial stage” of the Google site redesign announced earlier this week.