Google’s long awaited social network project, Google+, has been recently released to lucky few, while the rest of the world willing to try the “not Facebook but like Facebook” new kid on the social front are bound to wait. While in most cases restricting your beta release to a restricted group might be a bad idea, in Google’s case it seems to be working great.

Browsing my Google Reader today (yes, my online life is completely dependant on Google), I saw a quite a lot of stories on how to get invites faster, news roundups including the Google announcement, reviews, good or bad, and everything in between. While some proclaim Google+ another failure at getting the social concepts right from the search giant, others are already focusing on the features and how to leverage this new networking channel. Bottom line, the Google+ project keeps getting lots of coverage. 

Even if some were not that interested in trying a new social site after finally getting the hang of Facebook and Twitter, the fact that they can’t just access it at will does spike their curiosity. If you’re like me and want to try something before deciding if it works for you or not, then you’re probably also looking forward to getting  to play with Google+.

One secret of social media sites is that while some fail and other succeed, they all attract Internet users who want to test them. People are looking for a shiny new toy or a new way to promote their business, but regardless of their reasons, they will try a lot of new comers. I know I tried FriendFeed, Plurk, Reddit, Mixx and other such websites when they showed up and never used them or stopped using them along the way. And there were hundreds of thousands like me.

Google is Google. We love to hate them and keep a close eye on everything they do. So launching something new that a lot of people do want to try (just for kicks or because they secretly love to hate Facebook just as much) and then restricting access is a plan bound to make people anxious and eager to get access even more. Sure, some will be alienated, but when the secret society turns into public access for everyone and anyone, there will be hordes rushing in to try it. Maybe more than half will call it quits after a few days, maybe they’ll stay. The initial strategy still works!

The majority of LinkedIn members tweet, a lot of them quite frequently. That is what the results of a recent poll created by Debbie Weil have shown. Apart from 13 percent of users who see Twitter as a waste of time, the rest of them have Twitter accounts and 68% of all the 247 users that took the poll put it to good use.

Because LinkedIn polls do mix the replies with some other data on the members, you can see who tweets and how often by job title, company size, job function, gender and age.

Here are a few results I found interesting

• Company owners tweet more than others (VPs, managers and other types of personnel)
• Small companies and enterprises are big Twitter fans
• No Marketing or PR professionals see Twitter as a waste of time
• The male/female results are perfectly balanced!
• And speaking of young people not tweeting, everyone in the 18-24 age group is a proficient user.

If you’d like to view detailed results, click here. And if you’re on LinkedIn and would like to take the poll, please go here.

Guest post by Iuliana Butuc-Cerchez

Contacts. This is the word that matters nowadays for a large part of PR professionals and not only for them. That is why social networks were invented, collaboration software was created and so on.

LinkedIn is one of the most loved social networks in the business environment. Unfortunately, some people don’t get it all. I begun to receive almost once a week link in requests from various people I never met or emailed before. Some of them are recruiters. Some of them are sales people. Some of them just work for environmental projects. I’m wondering what’s in their minds before asking for your contacts without even mentioning a mere reason.

Most recently, X from EcoStuff is asking me to connect with him. “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”. Why? Did you meet me somewhere? Have we talked before? If yes, please remind me. If no, please explain why you are interested in my contacts.

Come on! Be a professional if you want to be included in a professional network.

Iuliana Butuc-Cerchez has been the Corporate Affairs Manager of the Gecad Group for over 4 years. She’s an exceptional PR professional and a true mentor for me. Before starting her PR career, she used to be this hard-core IT journalist at one of the best business and financial newspapers in Romania. She’s also a blogger, but as her blog is in Romanian, only part of my readers will be able to enjoy her articles.