Google+ may only be popular to a particular segment of users but Google is doing everything it can to get more people to use it. What's more, Google+ may even become the next version of Google.
Google has been doing everything it can to promote and get people to use its social networking service. The company, for instance, integrated all of its products and required real names for commenting on YouTube, making it harder for internet users not to use Google+. The social networking site now also have features seen as valuable for its users.
"There's a lot of great value here, because Search also shows results from Google+ and this is going to bring more people into Google+; people are going to see that there's a lot of value in logging into our services, before doing a search," said Steve Grove, Google's director of partnerships for Google+ in an interview with Livemint.
Grover explained that Google is integrating a number of services into Google+ because "Google+ is kind of like the next version of Google."
"We've been consolidating the different services, so today Search, YouTube, the Google Play app store, all this plugs into Google+. And the reason for that is that Google+ is kind of like the next version of Google."
Another way Google is enticing people to use Google+ is by partnering with celebrities and major companies. According to Grover, the community partner scheme will bring in media companies, sports stars, celebrities and other interesting people to the platform to generate content.
"Google+ is a content-centric social network, and we've got a lot of valuable content from partners, because they're posting things specifically to Google+. I'm talking about content that's unique across the Web. This brings in a ton of value."
Grover also said that there will be big developments on Google+ come 2014, but the center of their strategy right now is on mobile because "it's very important, especially for photos. It's also going to create a network future with people uploading live videos from their phones. Google+ could do for live video, what YouTube did for recorded video," he said.
