If you haven't heard about it yet, Google+ is Google's answer to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It is expected to be more business oriented than Facebook and more personal than LinkedIn without being tied to 140 characters as with Twitter. 

What I find amazing is that, in less than two months, Google+ has already accumulated over 25 million users and it is still officially in Beta trials.

Unfortunately, until a few days ago, you could not simply create a Profile and join. You had to be invited and invitations were difficult to get.

On August 4, however, Google announced that it will be rolling out a new feature over the next few days that will let you invite others simply by using a link. Since they are still in field trials, Google is limiting sign-ups from these links to 150 per person for now. With 150 invites per current Google+ user, that should open up a lot of places in this trial period. Even so, you might want to wait to give it a try. That's because Google has also announced that Business Profiles are coming soon to Google+. If you set up a personal Google+ profile now, you won’t be able to migrate that to the new Business Profiles that Google+ will be launching with enhanced analytics and sophisticated sharing options later this year. (To get a better idea of how Google+ works now, take the tour.)

If your curious about Google+ and its relative merits for your professional practice, Kevin O'Keefe, CEO of LexBlog, Inc. has done an excellent post on it at his Real Lawyers Have Blogs. Read Google plus for lawyers: first impressions for his very thorough review.

We've got more on Google+ too in a posting coming up tomorrow in our LinkedIn group, Raising the Bar: Social Media Marketing for Lawyers & CPAs. If you are not already a member, send me a request through your LinkedIn account.

Until next time,

Robin

(Want to make a comment? Click the title above to go to the RTB blog homepage. Scroll down and follow the prompts to leave your comment.)