With Google+ launching pages for brands yesterday, and instantly sharing a list of Google product pages for YouTube, Gmail and Google+ itself, tech blogs were all abuzz about the latest developments on the social network, and our own Drew Olanoff took an in-depth look at what Google+ pages means for Twitter.
As a wide variety of early adopters, including H&M, Fox News, FC Barcelona and even The Muppets, have flocked to Google+ to create brand pages, there’s one strangely restrictive policy they will all have to adhere to.
Google+’s promotion policy prohibits brands from running any promotions or competitions directly on their Google+ page. While brands will be able to link to promotions hosted elsewhere, the competition itself cannot be hosted on Google+. The policy states:
You may not run contests, sweepstakes, offers, coupons or other such promotions (“Promotion”) directly on your Google+ Page. You may display a link on your Google+ Page to a separate site where your Promotion is hosted so long as you (and not Google) are solely responsible for your Promotion and for compliance with all applicable federal, state and local laws, rules and regulations in the jurisdiction(s) where your Promotion is offered or promoted. Your Promotion must not be run or conducted in a way which conflicts with the +1 Button Policies, Google+ Privacy Policy or Google+ Pages Additional Terms of Service. Google has the right to remove your Promotion content from Google+ Page for any reason.
Facebook’s promotional policy is somewhat restrictive stating that “Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or an app on a Page Tab.” At the end of the day, brands are still able to host the competition on the social network, albeit under Facebook’s terms.
This move seems odd, as it could easily send any promotional traffic straight to a Facebook page when brands find that they are unable to host the promotions on Google+ itself.
Google+’s Real Name Policy proved to be a learning experience for the search giant, and while its Promotion Policy is certainly not as serious, it seems that the only party that stands to lose anything from such a restrictive stance is Google+ itself.
If you’re on Google+, be sure to join us on The Next Web’s brand new Google+ page here.
Guys, where is the +1 button anyway?... can´t +1 this.
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LikeIt may encourage brands to connect with people rather than throwing money at promotions. Well, I hope so.
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LikeThis is pretty strange. But I suppose it helps maintain the "flood" factor of G+. Certain posts will jump to the top of my stream when people add comments to them, so if a promotion is being run on G+, that has the potential to have a brand's page dominate my stream. Which could get annoying, obv. I wonder if they're doing some kind of workaround for this?
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LikeSherilynn Macale +1
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LikeI think Public circles can resolve that, like you say, you may want to only follow that brand content and no their contest content, so those who want the contest can jump inside that circle to receive it privately, yep, sounds good enough, loving brand on what is hot section.
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LikeI would argue google benefits most by helping others keep their sites alive and keeping traffic moving through the web. While FB (and to some extent twitter) want people to stay on their platform this doesn't seem the case with Google. Keep in mind their objectives are different than other social platforms.
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LikeConversation from Twitter
JoaquimMach interessant! però no va l'enllaç...
Dialalluna http://t.co/cLcYo3il upps!! A veure ara! ;-) Gràcies!!
Conversation from Facebook
we'll stick to facebook thanks.
That's true .. Google products is too much to enable other brands in it's pages.
Imho, Google is using controversy to make blogs like TNW write about their crappy policy to get more exposure and get some more buzz going. First with their 'real name'-policy. Now with this limitation. What's next?
Bodes to limit + adoption by businesses
idiots