Some major updates will soon be unveiled on Google+, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin and senior VP of social business, Vic Gundotra.
Speaking at a roundtable at the Web 2.0 Summit, in San Francisco, Gundotra said users will begin to see the Google+ strategy coming together by Christmas this year.
Google's social platform was introduced in June in a limited, invitation-only, field trial. As of 20 September though, Google+ became open to the public and the service now has over 40 million registered users.
According to Brin and Gundotra, the response to Google+ exceeded their expectations. Gundotra said: “The reality was that we had to prioritise doing some work and we didn't anticipate such fast growth.”
In the next few days and weeks, Google will begin rolling out upgrades to the service which include the ability to integrate Google Apps accounts on Google+, set up brand pages and use pseudonyms or nicknames rather than real names.
Up until now, Google+ has come under scrutiny for its real-name policy, and a number of users' profiles were removed due to their eccentric names. Gundotra could not go into detail about how the new naming policy will be implemented, and said that it was still being worked out.
While Google+ saw an explosion of growth and activity in the days following its public roll-out, analytics firms have reported that interest in the social network appeared to have dropped.
Not about numbers
Web analytics firm Chitika Insights published a report saying Google+'s growth spurt was short-lived and traffic on the site dropped by 60% to roughly the same level of activity it recorded before going public.
"It would appear that although high levels of publicity were able to draw new traffic to Google+, few of them saw reason to stay," said the report.
At the Web 2.0 conference, Gundotra, however, argued that reports on Google+ user numbers misunderstand the search giant's strategy.
According to Gundotra, Google wants to activate the users of existing Google services, bringing a social layer to its ecosystem rather than creating a separate social network. Gundotra said Google is in “an enviable position” in the social networking space because of its hundreds of millions of users across its different services worldwide.
Speaking of social network rival Facebook, Gundotra said: “The incumbent has a huge advantage and if you play the same game it's hard to win. We're going to play a different game”.
Gundotra also took a dig at Facebook saying that Google+ doesn't believe in oversharing, but rather in curation. “There's a reason why every thought in your head doesn't come out of your mouth.”
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