Though it seems to be up and running now, celebrity William Shatner had his Google+ profile removed temporarily. Apparently, he was “violating standards”.
It’s unclear what the problem was, but ast night, Shatner tweeted:
@WilliamShatner
William ShatnerMy Google+ account was flagged for violating standards. Saying hello to everyone apparently is against the rules maybe I should say goodbye?
8 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
Google did say last week that it was shutting down brand pages ahead of its official release of them. The company is supposed to start letting some businesses launch such pages this week, but on an application-approval process basis only.
A few days ago, Shatner tweeted as he was trying to figure the new social network out:
@WilliamShatner
William Shatner@wilw This is me on G+ http://t.co/t6QYYaK I’ve added you to my circle. Now what do I do? My best, Bill 3 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto
Shatner has made no public posts to his Google+ profile, at least since it was back up. He has 1,108 people in Cirlces, and 1,224 more have him in their Circles.
Celebrity use has been huge for pushing Twitter’s momentum among the common folk. Remember when Oprah joined?
The whole Shatner thing could actually help Google+ gain some visibility in this regard. The man (obviously) has a lot of fans, and this incident has simply drawn attention to the face that he’s on. It also shows the public that celebrities are already embracing Google+ (he’s not the first), and will give them more reason to join too – for the same reason many joined Twitter.
So far, Google+ seems to be taking more time away from users’ Twitter use than their Facebook use, and given Twitter’s much lower user-count, and integration into various facets of every day life for many people (compared to Facebook), Twitter might feel the threat of this emerging social network quicker than Facebook.
During Google’s earnings call on Thursday, CEO Larry Page announced that Google+ had already surpassed 10 million users. I wonder what it’s up to now.
Hat tipd to Robin Wauters.
