Back in July we blogged on the launch of Google+. We highlighted how it could offer an opportunity to reconsider how we share our lives online and offer the potential to take a different path altogether. Since then the social network has opened up to the masses and only last week rolled out company pages across the social network . To this end, any business, group or entity can create a profile. Sound familiar?

Skepticism aside (for now), we’ve been reassured that the site offers some new “unique features” thereby enticing company presence. Save the Children, BBC News, the Daily Mail (and good old Madge!) are some that have already delved in and among the first to create profiles. In this light, what does this mean for brand’s social media strategies? Do they need to expand and integrate all things Google within their programmes or can they choose to ignore, but at risk of missing an increasingly influential trick?

Over the coming months, it’ll be interesting to see if there’s collective movement across industries from key competitors, such as Facebook, or if marketing leads will allow brands to co-exist and evolve across an increasing number of channels.

Google’s global conquest is well underway but with a proportion of companies (pharma especially) only just getting into the swing of things with pre-existing social networks such as Facebook, are we ready to take on a full-blown affair with +1? Discuss…

The Virgo design team is always on the lookout for design inspiration to help us deliver materials and campaigns that look as good as they read – whether offline or in the digital world, where communicating visually is vital. We came across Google’s epic doodles – which were divided up to form the unique front covers – and couldn’t help but be impressed. The illustrators created 3,750 individual drawings to represent technology bringing people together.

This unusual project has certainly got us appreciating bespoke design and thinking about how we can approach projects creatively. To see more, check out the video…

Google Think Quarterly doodle video

Mainly, as the Propel London blog points out, is the fact that it is everything you like about other social networks but stronger, better and faster. There is more chance you’ll get content you’re interested in without having to sign up to RSS feeds or follow people on twitter thanks to the ‘Sparks’ function.

And if you want to filter out friendship groups rather than post to a wall you have no idea who sees anymore, then you put people in ‘Circles’. That way family stays family, college friends stay college friends, and drinking buddies stay drinking buddies. (This may have particular advantages in the healthcare arena, as the KevinMD blog has argued.)

Want to chat to a group of people all at once rather than texting everyone separately? Then call together a ‘Huddle’ through your mobile phone. Want to join a group of people chatting through the instant messenger function? Just join the ‘Hangout’.

Yes, you can do these kinds of things on other platforms but the way they are organised on Google+ is arguably more intuitive. The only problem is will enough people bother to leave Facebook and start all over again? If you are one of the brave souls that decides to venture outside the blue walls, Mashable’s hints for new users is a great place to start.

In some respects, Google+ could be the ‘maturing’ of social networking. After all, it’s only been a few years that we have been sharing all this personal content to tens and hundreds of people online and it all kind of just happened didn’t it? So now perhaps Google+ offers an opportunity to look soberly at how we share our lives online and take a different path altogether.

To enroll, willing Parkinson’s patients pay a small fee to show they are committed. They then receive a test kit which they spit into and return for analysis, along with a lifestyle questionnaire. Google technology will then look for patterns in the data.

Research in Parkinson’s, and most diseases, has historically been limited to small groups of patients to test a hypothesis. But collecting evidence and analysing it through complex algorithms will unveil all kinds of new insights. Sergey Brin explained it in more detail in a recent interview with Wired Magazine.

This is definitely one to watch. Not least because Google are famous for developing innovative new software (think Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Buzz, Google Wave, etc.) So one day when you ‘Google’ a condition, it might not just be articles you receive, but analysis of all the evidence to help you guide the clinical development pathways of new drugs. Even if such a big project does not come to fruition, Brin’s approach could be replicated for other conditions, which would surely have significant implications on both the patient and the healthcare industry.

Google Wave is one that all the tech kids have been jumping up and down about. For businesses, it could become the norm for meeting online and sharing a wide range of multimedia content. So it could be a big threat to WebEx and other online conference providers since you can quickly upload photos, videos and (in the future) documents to comment on and update online. The genius is that you can rewind the ‘wave’ so you can replay the meeting again at any time. At the moment it is in an early-stage format and users have to be invited to use it.

Google also announced that it is exploring developing a ‘real time results’ section of its regular search so users can see the very latest messages from Twitter and breaking online news as it happens. This could be invaluable for finding out who is saying what about a particular issue or brand and for pharma, it makes online conversations even more visible, making previously closed or less accessible discussions loud and clear for all to hear. This is yet another reason why pharma regulations desperately need to catch up with technology, and why our industry needs to be increasingly forward thinking to allow developments to be an advantage, not a nightmare.