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| Pastor Nathan Bickel |
Pastor Bickel and I discuss blogging regularly, on Facebook, so I suggested he enroll in Google Plus.
One of my FB friends is prolific in taking advantage of Google Plus and her son is a developer at G+.
Dan Engle at Necessary Roughness got me started with G+. Like Facebook and Twitter, it was something I did not know, understand, or use very well at first.
I decided to start Tweeting each post on my blogs and also use G+ to link them. According to someone out there on the Net, social networking will make readership grow exponentially at some point. I always saw steady growth each year, thanks to frequent negative endorsements and bans. Nothing drives college students to a website faster than idiot faculty members telling them never to go there.
In the last few months page-views grew by 50% and stayed there, about 3,200 per day average. I thought 60,000 per month was a good figure in October. March will reach 100,000 at this rate.
I am inclined to give credit to G+ for the sudden increase. Scandals help, but they never get the top page views or last very long in their impact. The upsurge in specific page views has come from doctrinal posts,
Here are the top five in the last 30 days:
The Luther quotation and the Apology link continue to lead in all categories, belying the claim that this blog is just for gossip. WELS and Missouri will supply the scandals - I will provide the doctrinal posts (and graphics).
I love to see others blogging and sharing their opinions and research. To increase readership,
I:
- Include graphics. Some are fun, others are serious.
- Include a lot of internal links to other posts.
- Blog This! with a lot of relevant stories, which gives credit to the original author (pace McCain) and provides the link - a bonus for me and one for the original site.
- Link to my other blogs.
- Post on Facebook, especially on non-Lutheran pages.
- Tweet each post.
- Google Plus each post.
That may sound like work but most of it takes a few seconds total. Social networking does the heavy lifting in sharing everything around the Internet.
Readers can add to the effect by using the buttons below each post, right below Posted by Gregory Jackson...
If you are using Google Plus, add Pastor Bickel to your circles.
Wikipedia Article:
Introduction
Before launching, Google+ was originally called Google Circles, a name alluding to its emphasis on organising friendship information.[7] The service was launched as aninvitation-only "field test" in June 2011.[8] Early invites were soon suspended due to an "insane demand" for new accounts.[9] On September 20, 2011, Google+ was opened to everyone 18 years of age or older without the need for an invitation.[10] It was opened for a younger age group (13+ years old in US and most countries, 14+ in South Korea and Spain, 16+ in the Netherlands) on January 26, 2012.[11][12]
Google+ integrates social services such as Google Profiles, and introduces new services identified as Circles, Hangouts and Sparks.[13] Google+ is available as a website and on mobile devices. Sources such as The New York Times have declared it Google's biggest attempt to rival the social network Facebook,[14] which has over 1 billion users.[15][not in citation given] Google+ is considered the company's fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz (launched 2010, retired in 2011), Google Friend Connect (launched 2008, retired by March 1, 2012) and Orkut (launched in 2004, now operated entirely by subsidiary Google Brazil).
In November 2011, Google+ was integrated into the account creation process for other Google services, such as Google Mail.[16]According to independent analysis of its growth in December 2011, the site was adding an estimated number of 625,000 new users a day, which may total 400 million members by the end of 2012.[17][18] However, on February 28, 2012 Todd Wasserman from Mashable reported Google+ users are only spending 3.3 minutes monthly on Google+ which is a downward trend from 4.8 minutes in December and 5.1 minutes in November compared to Facebook users currently spending 7.5 hours using Facebook monthly.[19]
[edit]History
The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invitation-only "field testing" phase.[8] The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age[20] to the service to create their own accounts. This was suspended the next day due to an "insane demand" for accounts.[9]
On July 14, 2011, Google announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after the launch of a "limited" trial phase.[21] After four weeks in operation, it had reached 25 million unique visitors.[22] Based on ComScore, the biggest market was theUnited States followed by India.[23] In October 2011, the service reached 40 million users, according to Larry Page;[24] by the end of the year Google+ had 90 million users.[25]
On August 6, each Google+ member had 150 invitations to give out,[26] but on September 20, 2011, Google+ was opened to everyone 18 years of age or older without the need for an invitation.[10] After Google+ went public, users registered to Google+, but those under 18 years of age were unable to sign up for Google+.[27]
At the initial launch, Google Apps accounts could not be used on Google+ due to lack of support for Google Profiles.[28][29][30] On October 27, Google announced that Google+ now supports Google Apps users (if the user's domain administrator has enabled the service).[31]
Despite experiencing high growth in the U.S and European markets, Google+ still remains unavailable in mainland China. While it is not technically "blocked", it was made impossible to use by slowing it down to a crawl.[32]
In just under a day, the Google+ iPhone app became the most popular free application in the Apple App Store.[33]
Early adopters of Google+ have been mostly male (71.24%). The dominant age bracket (35%) is between 25 and 34.[34]
An August, 2011 survey estimates 13% of U.S. adults have joined Google+; it is projected to have 22% of U.S. adults in a year.[35]
On November 7, 2011, Google launched Google+ Pages, which will let businesses connect with fans in a manner similar to Facebook Pages. These businesses will receive corporate accounts to start sharing information about themselves and invite others to join in on the conversation.[36][37]
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