Not for me but...
I do hope that the costs of this venture don't mean (even) more banner ads and pop-ups on the main site.
I know advertising is essential to pay bills, wages etc. but keeping costs down can help too.
The Register has taken a billet at Google+. You can find us at http://google.com/+theregister. Nothing spectacular – just a feed of our articles, and the very occasional cartoon share. We will monitor and sometimes reply to comments and will step up our social media community engagement ... if numbers justify. Google+ …
Feedback noted, but are you sure about ad pop-ups? We don't run them, If any reader spots one please grab URL of landing page and ping to webmaster@sitpbub.com
Also we have enough ad units - we carry fewer ads per page than our UK competitors.
BTW Google+ running costs are a fraction above zero.
I was a fairly early adopter of G+. I find it a good way of getting information and discussing stuff with people who want to talk about what I consider interesting.
I'm sure Google want to take Google+ beyond the Linux / Android geek-squad who use this as their private Knitting Circle. 'Cause you're never gonna get those epic Facebook numbers just catering to those types...
They've kind of done that by grabbing all the gmail logins and youtube commenters. Of course that only makes those people "Active G+ users" in the marketing gumpf, but nevertheless news agencies will parrot it when "Google+ users outnumber facebook users"....
I think it's main purpose is an identity server tying the various other Google services you may or may not use together. The value grows as the network of those services grows. This allows it to recommend apps on the Google store that your Google+ contacts have approved of. I ignore that kind of thing and you can turn it off but it's certainly a lot less intrusive than other approaches and I can see its appeal. I don't do a lot of the "look at me" sharing stuff, after all what's e-mail for? But I will admit to finding Hangouts very nicely done. If Google can continue to put providing useful services first then I'm sure they'll get more and more successful and Google+ will simply be a part of those services and not something on its own. Companies will like it because, of course, it offers the prospect of single sign-on with the holy grail of detailed demographic data.
At the time that I followed/circled you - you have 1,448 +1's and 720 people have circled you.
In what - an hour, an hour and a half?
We G+ folks are a demanding bunch though - we like engagement - that's what sets apart G+ from every other network - even on Twitter a lot of the time you aren't talking to the person you think you are - you are talking to whoever represents them (there are obviously very high profile exceptions to this).
Expect to see people mention you in comments and posts - we like social.
PS - in the time it took me to to write this (a few minutes) your follower count went from 720 to 733.
I think you may yet learn the value of Google+
Well... I would like to say that we have tapped into fast growing reader source but... we stumbled across this G+ page a few weeks ago that a staffer had put up a couple of years ago. - no content, but 500 followers and maybe 500 who had had put us in their circles.So we added content maybe three weeks ago and told Google that this was our official page.
If those 500 + and circles are anything like what I see on Youtube, they were all accidental clicks.
Sorry, but that's what they did with Youtube (and I've seen all the mistaken posts/clicks/likes/adds from the pros/businesses) and I'd not expect better else where.
That is very kind of you, Graeme. Unfortunately, G+ doesn't take kindly to those subheads.
Kevin, our web coder, says:
We have the og property set for subheads but G+ don't seem to support it so I don't think so.
<meta property="og:description" content=""/>
Does anyone know different?
That would be novel... we get some traffic via FB, but almost all via the FB lLke button on our articles rather than through our our FB page. Yes, we have one! We monitor this lightly - every now and then someone gives us a story tip, or tells us off, or tell us they love us.
But for interaction, story tips, corrections etc. - Twitter is by far the most active medium for us. There is that official @theregister address again.