Celebrities have been huge for driving Twitter use. Remember the Oprah effect? Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and Ashton Kutcher are a few others who have been heavy Twitter users and drawn massive amounts of followers.
Watch out Twitter, because Google is trying to get them to follow a similar path with Google+. According to a report from CNN, Google has some plans for celebrity acquisition, which would see the Hollywood elite using the service, and of course drawing the attention and use of fans. Mark Milian reports:
As part of this initiative, Google is beginning to devise a system that would verify the identities of public figures who sign up for the service, said Brett Schulte, a Hollywood consultant and organizer of social-media gatherings called Tweet House.
The validation process would prevent people from impersonating celebrities and perhaps feature a button on legitimate profiles similar to Twitter’s “verified” stamp, said Schulte, who said he discussed the project with Google employees.
Interestingly enough, William Shatner was temporarily booted off Google+ this week.
As discussed previously, Google has also been putting a great deal of emphasis on business use cases for Google+. If Google can win both celebrities and businesses, Facebook is going to have its hands full in the realm of competition, not to mention the smaller, but still very significant players like Twitter and the newly public LinkedIn.
Speaking of LinkedIn, CEO Jeff Weiner is quoted as saying, “Nobody has any free time…Unlike social platforms and TV ,which can coexist, you don’t see people using Twitter while they’re on Facebook, or using Facebook while they’re using LinkedIn.”
It will be interesting to see how that time is divided up for LinkedIn, which is all about being the professional network. There are a lot of professionals on Google+, and putting professional contacts in their own circle, keeping them separate from say, your drinking buddies is pretty easy.