Google+ Launches Embeds, Starts To Highlight WordPress.com
Starting today, Google+ users will be able to embed their posts anywhere on the web. The new feature provides its users with the code needed to embed posts …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google had already been threading Google+ into its own publishing properties through Blogger’s early Google+ features and into third-party reading through Google+ streams on Flipboard. The WordPress.com emphasis extends that distribution strategy to a major hosted-blog platform rather than keeping social activity inside Google-owned surfaces.
Google’s earlier Living Stories work with WordPress also shows a longer-running effort to connect its content products with WordPress publishing. Embeddable posts add a portable format to that partner-facing approach.
First-order effects
- Google+ users can place individual posts on external pages, giving publishers and bloggers a direct way to display Google+ content without reproducing it manually.
- WordPress.com receives greater visibility from Google+, while its publishers gain a clearer connection to Google’s social layer.
Second-order effects
- Blogger’s earlier Google+ integration is less distinctive as Google+ expands distribution to WordPress.com and to sites that use embeds rather than Google-owned publishing tools.
- External publishers can treat Google+ posts as reusable page elements, increasing the value of maintaining active Google+ accounts alongside conventional blog publishing.
Third-order effects
- If Google continues pairing social features with publishing partners, Google+ is positioned less as a destination-only network and more as a distribution layer embedded across the web.
- The pattern shifts competition among publishing platforms toward which services can carry social content, identity, and audience interaction across third-party sites.
The trend: Google is turning Google+ from a standalone social property into a portable publishing and distribution layer linked to major content platforms.