The big news recently, if you haven’t heard, is that Google+ is a really big deal. I know that I even made fun of it when it first came out but you can’t make fun of it when it becomes the #2 most active social networking platform, just behind the obvious #1 Facebook.
Yeah, that’s right. Unbelievable statistics and the proof is in the pudding:
Google+, who despite being branded a failure or ghost town by large portions of the media, grew in terms of active usage by 27% to 343m users to become the number 2 social platform.
Interestingly for Google, YouTube (not previously tracked by us as a social platform) comes in at number 3, demonstrating the immense opportunity of linking Google’s services through the G+ social layer.
This is also a key indication of why Google+ integrated with the Google product set is so key to the future of search and the internet.
Check out these unbelievable graphs:
Top 25 Active Services
Hey, it gets even better:
Social Active Usage
Yikes. When everyone and their mother is talking about Twitter-this and Twitter-that Google+ has silently continued to grow up and to the right.
In terms of WordPress users and even developers and designers it would behoove you to consider Google+ in both your design layers as well as in your development to a certain extent. And if you’re an online publisher it means that you need to get cracking on Google+ as soon as you can.
So, What Gives Jetpack?
But this begs the question – why isn’t Google+ a standard publishing feature in Jetpack, the heavily used and updated plugin? As you can see here it’s not an available option for publishers to publicize with:
Where is Google+?
Before you get all up-in-arms about it there’s a valid reason why: Google+ currently does not have a writeable API. Sorry folks, Google+ API is just read only, so there is no direct way to sync and push updates.
Sadness.
Sure, you can do it manually (like we do) by hitting the “Publish” button on a blog post and then going to the blog post itself and clicking one of the available Jetpack share buttons, but that’s too many steps for super-busy publishers!
Ok. Fine.
Yes, I’m complaining, but with this new recent research it makes sense to at least keep it on the bucket-list and implement it as soon as it’s readily available.
Ok. As you were.
[via Forbes]
I don’t think an official write api has been released yet?
Doh, you mentioned that …
ya, Google+ hasn’t made posting from other apps available. I’m waiting anxiously for it to become available in bufferapp.com.
This lack of API access is the reason I rarely post to Google+. The reason I post so frequently to Twitter is I have a nice compact Twitter app (and tools like Buffer) to do so. I don’t want to keep a browser tab open to G+ just to stay active on that network.
As a pastor and Google+ user (although barely starting) I have yet to see a lot of just every day folks engaging there and using it. I do however think it’s layout, usefulness, etc are far superior to Facebook. I mostly see tech guys, pastors, business folks using + for now. I hope to see more engage soon
In the best interest of growing the Google+ community, Google needs to get their api released.
However, Hootesuite allows you to publish to Google+ Pages. I wish THIS were at least added as an option with Jetpack.
I’ve seen a few sites (I think I saw this in a shareaholic plugin) that have worked around this by generating a popup window that links to the “Share this” modal in G+, or something to that effect. I wonder how hard it would be to setup a plugin that triggers on a “publicize” event and gives you that window to easily allow you to share on G+
Yes, I’ve been waiting for this API update. Anyone know if it’s in progress or even planned? It seems inevitable to me, but it’s been a long time without it and I’m starting to wonder if they aren’t planning to have a write API to keep people from spamming it and trying to game it for SEO benefits.
It certainly would grow their user base and activity though.
I’ve wondered the same Evan. There really doesn’t seem to be that much Spam on G+ which is a great feature of it.
The Google+ History API provides write access. It is still only in developer preview (so therefore, not ready to be integrated into Jetpack), and it’s not a direct “write to stream” API, but that is where you are going to see this kind of functionality.
I would also like to see Jetpack add the ability to publish to more than one Facebook page. I’d like to publish to my personal page AND my blog page at the same time.
Mark, Jetpack CAN publish to more than one Facebook page at a time. I wanted to publish to a personal wall and a “fan page”, of which i was an admin.
I got around that, but it is a bit contrived- make a new facebook account, and use your original account to invite the new account to be an admin, then add the second account to Jetpack (log out of normal FB page and login to “new” FB page.
You can then choose to post to your new FB account or you fan page.
Does that make any sense at all?
Ian, thanks for the tip. I followed your instructions and it looks like I’m set up to post to my personal page and my fan page. So to answer your question, it makes perfect sense.
Good to hear it worked for you too. Now if only there was a workaround for Google+ we would all be sorted. I ditched Wordbooker for Publicize, but only when i got it to talk to both pages- trying to minimise plugins after a hack, and Jetpack was staying anyway….
I have no idea about coding, but if you can publish a blog, and then click a button to put it on your Google+ page, then surely this ability/ facility MUST be able to be automated, No??
What I don’t understand is why Google would make this difficult. If they want Google+ to overtake Facebook, it seems as though they would want more content rather than less. Making it easier to publish to G+ would provide for more content.
Great post! I completely agree and this is quite annoying. What the heck is Google thinking? They need to get on top of their stuff and get an update ASAP! You are severely slacking behind Facebook. Google better spice up your game or you’ll be out before you’ve even started:/
Ok, I am curious to know if there have been any changes to this. My curiosity stems from the fact that when my wife publishes to her Blogger blog, her posts are automatically pushed to her Google+ page (and she wasn’t even aware that it was happening). I realize that they are both Google products, which makes it feasible that it they are circumventing the API. But, it also seems realistic they have updated things? Does anyone know?
I was just looking for the answer to this and it still doesn’t appear to be possible. Hopefully with the new G+ comment system for WordPress this will be close behind.