Zuckerberg- The most popular user on google plus

According to the Google+ statistics counter, Mark Zuckerberg has the most followers of any user on Google+ with 34759 followers. This Facebook CEO and creator surpasses Google CEO, Larry Page, who has 23633 followers as well as Vic Gundotra, Google social czar, who has 13,783 followers. Other top followed users include Sergey Brin, Google co-founder; Robert Scoble, blogger; Matt Cutts, Google spam avenger; Leo Laporte, TWIT founder; Bradley Horowitz, also of Google; MG Siegler from TechCrunch, and Gina Trapani, blogger.

View the complete list here

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Google+ statistics creator, explained Zuckerberg’s popularity by telling readers, “He has the most friends in the world, they made a movie about him, and he is more handsome than the Larry and Sergey.” Others speculate that Zuckerberg has so many followers because he has gotten so much media coverage surrounding Google+.
When Zuckerberg first joined Google+, it was talked about all over the internet. At first, users were not sure if the Mark Zuckerberg profile was real or if it was a fake. Other users were surprised the Facebook CEO and creator would join Google+, which could potentially become Facebook’s biggest rival assuming it is more successful than Google’s previous attempt to break into social networking with Google Buzz.

Eventually, it was revealed that the Zuckerberg profile indeed was not fake, and many users were surprised he was on there. He, however, did not think it was a big deal, especially as he was following in the footsteps of other internet phenomenon founders like Myspace Tom, who showed us that it wasn’t a big deal to participate in rival websites.
Clearly with all of the followers Zuckerberg has gained on Google+, Google+ users are quite interested to see how Google+ stacks up against Facebook. What do you think?

Now google plus is providing verification badges for celebs

Wen-Ai Yu from the Google Plus team updated users last Saturday with an announcement that Google Plus will now boast “verification badges” for celebrities and public figures and also people who have been added to a large number of Circles. He stated that Google Plus will also be expanding the verified profile system within the very near future.

Basically, the badges are grey check marks similar to those on Twitter. When you hover over them, they expand to say “verified name.” Yu also said that people who do not yet have a verified profile should “hang tight.”

It’s still not clear exactly how Google is verifying the identity of celebrities and public figures. One option that was mentioned by an earlier CNN report, though, was that the Google Plus team could be getting the celebrities to fax a copy of their driver’s licenses. Also, it’s still unclear why some people are getting verified and others are not. No one knows exactly how many Circles you have to be added to before you will get a verified profile, but Mark Zuckerberg, who is the most followed person so far on Google Plus,does not yet have one. Others have suggested that there should be a dedicated page which lists all of the verified profiles so that newcomers to Google Plus can find more people to follow.

In the meantime, there’s still a debate going on about Google Plus’s real name policy. Google Plus requires users to disclose their genders as well as their real names to join the social network, and Google has actually deleted profiles based on the fact that the users involved weren’t using their real names. Many users would like to see this policy changed.

All private google plus profiles will be deleted by google

Google+ is essentially requiring all profiles to be public. Among the limited profiles that are on Google+ now, Google+ is going to delete all profiles that are private by July 31, 2011. On the Google+ help page, it is stated that there will be no private Google+ profiles.

The Google+ help section states:

The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public.

Keep in mind that your full name and gender are the only required information that will be displayed on your profile; you’ll be able to edit or remove any other information that you don’t want to share.

If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.

This is one of the most significant differences so far between Facebook and Google+. On Facebook, you can make your profile exclusively private. In this case, your Facebook won’t even come up when someone does a Google search on you. In some cases, you can even set your account so that no one will be able to search for you within Facebook, and the only friends you have on Facebook are people you specifically seek out and ask to be friends.

With this new information from Google+, though, it appears anyone who uses the new social networking site will be required to at least share their full name and gender, which means anyone will be able to find your Google+ profile.

Doing more with the +1 button, more than 4 billion times a day

In June we launched the +1 button for websites, making it easier to recommend content across the web. In July, the +1 button crossed 2 billion daily views, and we also made it a lot faster. Today the +1 button appears on more than a million sites, with over 4 billion daily views, and we’re extremely excited about this momentum.

It’s just the beginning, however, and today we’re launching two more features that make +1 buttons more useful for users and publishers alike.

Sharing with your circles on Google+
Clicking the +1 button is a great way to highlight content for others when they search on Google. But sometimes you want to start a conversation right away—at least with certain groups of friends. So beginning today, we’re making it easy for Google+ users to share webpages with their circles, directly from the +1 button. Just +1 a page as usual and look for the new “Share on Google+” option. From there you can comment, choose a circle and share.

When you share content from the +1 button, you’ll notice that we automatically include a link, an image and a description in the sharebox. We call these “+snippets,” and they’re a great way to jumpstart conversations with the people you care about.

Of course: publishers can benefit from +snippets as well. With just a few changes to their webpages, publishers can actually customize their +snippets and encourage more sharing of their content on Google+. More details are available on the Google Webmaster blog.
We’re rolling out sharing and +snippets globally over the next week, but if you’d like to try the new +1 button now, you can join our Google+ Platform Preview. Once you’re part of the Preview, just visit a site with the +1 button (like Rotten Tomatoes) and +1 the page.