The Google+ Project

There is a path that Google+ is headed down, with or without our complicity: a media-sharing and discovery powerhouse. Its tight integration with Google's own suite of content creation and consumption products and properties make Google+ a wonderful real-time content-sharing and discovery engine.

As we have seen with Facebook, nothing engages consumers like good content in their social networking streams, and there is no shortage of that in the Google ecosystem to proliferate and reverberate through Google+'s echo chamber.

Brands are about to get two very important content distribution channels (in addition to Facebook), and should be developing their content distribution strategies now, if they haven't already. Facebook will likely remain a channel for consumers to have a relationship with the people and brands they "like," but Google+ and Twitter look to be on a collision course as channels that may drive significantly more content shares and views due to their platform, device, and software integrations. Add Google's Search and product importance into the mix, and you don't just get distribution, you get filing, storage, and streaming as well.