A few weeks ago I saw this peice on The Register about an Apple employee who was fired as a result of privately making derogatory comments about Apple’s brand and products on his Facebook wall. His undoing was that not all his “friends” were friends, and one printed off the comments and showed them to his boss.
Story from The Register: Apple was OK to fire man for private Facebook comments
Then today I came across a very similar story but with quite a different ending. A Google engineer posted a rant about all the problems he saw with Google plus but instead of posting it privately he accidentally made it public. He wasn’t fired, he even says Google said it was his decision to delete it or not (he did, and posted this response, which some could question if it was written for him).
Story from Forbes: Whoops. Google Engineer Accidentally Makes His ‘Plus Sucks’ Rant Public.
Either way, I know which company I’d prefer to work for.
These opinion pieces are everywhere.
Why Google+ Pages Isn’t Good for Business
4 Reasons Google+ Brand Pages Will Be Better Than Facebook’s
Google Plus Finds Sweet Spot Between Facebook & Twitter
Google Engineer Calls Google Plus a ‘Complete Failure’; 5 Reasons We Agree
Why It is Wrong to Call Google Plus a Failure
Google Plus may be “not ready” for business, but it isn’t “not good for business”. It’s a beta product, the future is far from clear.
It would be foolish to right off the provider of the biggest search engine, video sharing and blogging platform. But equally daft to claim you must join in now or you’ll miss out.
Articles which launch with attention grabbing headlines like “Why Google+ Pages Isn’t Good for Business” are just as bad as the confusing rhetoric they criticise other of.
All any of these pieces needs to say is “Google Plus is interesting, but it’s not there yet, watch this space”
The last two articles linked to at the top of this peice are from the same website, so at least there’s some other balance out there.
Our corporate firewall at work got a bit over excited today and decided to block www.google.co.uk as it had been categorised as “sex”
Someone somewhere must have been doing some impressive extra curricular research to get that to happen.
The people at Mashable have been busy. Busy seeing what google is really used for.
They ask the important questions of ”When will…” “Why is my g…” “Can I have a…” ”Is it impossible to l…”, Why do…” “Can you…” “Where do…” “How does…” “Can Jes…” “Can go…” and let google answer them.
