Tying It Back – App Discovery Evolves

Google rolled out some darn interesting news with its announcement that apps that utilize Google+ login will now start to see info showing up in Google search results. The feature, which came out at last week’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, will allow users who sign in with Google+ to share their activities from within apps. These activities in turn show up in Google’s search results and in the Google+ profiles of app users who choose to share. It’s another way of boosting profiles of people and apps, and it relies on Google+ as a sign on mechanism and social platform. “Putting users in control helps to build trust in your app and encourages meaningful sharing” sez Google in one of their many case studies on how companies are working with Google+.

Google vs Apple
The feature reinforces how well Google+ is doing as a social platform and how it’s becoming an alternative or additional sign in mechanism to Facebook. Speaking of Facebook, in other interesting news last week, Facebook announced in their earnings call that Facebook ads have become a really significant driver of revenue for both the company and for app developers who are promoting through their platform. With 700 million plus active users, it’s a significant ad network, especially considering that so much of Facebook activity is through mobile these days.
So where does that leave Apple? Well, they don’t really have a social network per se (anyone remember Ping?), but they do have a killer hardware network. It’s interesting how rapidly Google has continued to evolve their software experience through their apps and search engine infrastructure relative to Apple.