Google+ to get brand pages soon
Google is set to allow people to create non-real identities on its Google+ social network, and it will open the service up to everyone using Google Apps, including businesses.
Brand pages are coming to Google+ "imminently," according to Google's senior vice president of engineering, Vic Gundotra. "Not days...a little bit longer than days," he said.
Gundotra, who shared the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today with Google co-founder Segrey Brin, said there has been "overwhelming interest" in this feature. For users who want to have a non-real identity, Gundotra said that Google+ would support pseudonyms. He explained that the feature was not in the product at the beginning because Google wanted to set the atmosphere in the initial rollout. The social network currently has 40 million users.
In addition, Gundotra said that Google+ would soon be available to businesses large and small that use Google Apps. Google Apps--which lets businesses do online calendaring, word processing, and more--now has 4 million customers and is adding 5,000 users every day. That feature, Gundotra said, would be available "any day."