Tune-in to Google

Google seem to be launching a brand new product at least every week at the moment. In an attempt to grab a bit of the pie of one of the most lucrative online consumer markets, Google announced the launch of Google Music this week. Now users can purchase and download music through Google, and then access it anywhere, on any device providing you live in the USA (for the moment). Google Music is the completed version of the beta version launched in May this year. Music Beta enabled it’s users to upload up to 20,000 of their favourite songs to “the cloud” so they could stream it from any location. A few features to look out for:

• Google Music will automatically upload all of your current playlists and albums from any program.
• A new music store has been launched in the Android Market, which is to be fully integrated with Google Music
• The sharing capability through Google+.

In a tactical move to centralise their Social Media, if you share a purchased song on Google+ your friends will be able to listen to it once for free.

Minnie’s Verdict

Scratching… still scratching, making us worry about fleas? Like with most Google launches, it’s not available in the UK as yet so we are waiting to have a play. Although without using it, it is clear that this is a direct move for Google to challenge Spotify and i-tunes. The product adds yet another completed feature (incentive) to stay on Google+, should we be worried about Google’s ever growing dominance of the internet?

Ripple effect

Staying with Google for the moment, they have announced the new ripple feature on Google+, which has been making waves of its own in the online marketing industry. The ripple is a tool which visually enables users to see what posts are shared, who shares them (the key influencers), when it’s shared and in which language. You can now see where post originates from, and who played the biggest part in promoting it. As you can see, ripples is almost a real-life example of the web communications model.

Minnie’s Verdict

Rolling around in excitement, tail wagging, heavy panting! In terms of social media marketing, this feature is the answer to a question which has been asked for so long. It visually details who the “Opinion Leaders” are, and what people are interested in. It holds many implications for marketers, i.e. if you have a story that needs publicising, one of the first questions you ask yourself is: Who is worth contacting to push your article through in a specific subject area? This is something which other social media has not capitalised on. For instance, on Twitter you can see a list of activity of people who follow you and users you follow, as well as listing the activity of your own tweets and that’s about it. You need to look over several pages and lists which can be time-consuming and sometimes unrewarding. There is no other free tool we know of which provides the same scope as Google+ ripple offers.