November, 7, 2011; Source: Google Blog | Heads up! Social network, Google + has announced that it is establishing web pages for businesses.

If you want to see what the pages look like, twenty large companies like Pepsi and X Games have already created brand pages and are using Google+ to reach out to customers and share images.  Soon, any and all organizations will soon be able to join the community, but Google+ Your Business is still working out some final kinks.

Will Google+ be offering anything that isn’t already available for businesses and nonprofits via other social networks? It’s hard to tell at this juncture. The video features could pull together social media and video technology in a seamless form that hasn’t quite been introduced yet, and another feature that will be available is Direct Connect, which will allow users to quickly navigate to Google+ Pages through Google Search. If anyone does a search for “+youtube,” for example, he or she will be given the option of being immediately directed to the YouTube Google+ page and adding the page to their circles.

Google+ could take ownership of simplifying social media for its users. That is, after all, how the Google search engine first gained its enormous popularity. Since the social network is coming in later—after Facebook’s, which attempts to pack every possible feature into its platform—taking a step back and offering a few well-thought-out tools and features providing a plethora of ways to connect could make Google+ the “next big thing.”

Will Google’s attempt to draw businesses to Google+ be successful? And will nonprofit entities turn out to be as engaged with Google+ as their for-profit counterparts?—Aine Creedon