Google Play includes Social Sharing

Bea Halstead - March 28, 2012

Google Play begins to rollout globally today offering a condensed source for content from the previous Android market and other Google products.  Digital content gets a new platform within Play, by combining a user’s Google music, e-books, android apps, and games into a single hub.  A user will be able to access all their content from any Android device (mobile/tablet), computer, and even TV simultaneously with the aid of the free cloud.  Social sharing has been taken into account as well, and each of these categories offers unique options to share products with friends.  Non-android market users can access Google Play via an existing Google account, or on the web at play.google.com.  Google condensing all of these features into one place, and promoting the sharing primarily within Google Plus, may help to boost the engagement levels within the social network.

“Share what you love” is the slogan being used to promote the social sharing aspects of Google Play.  It includes the ability to share posts about your favorite e-books, music, movies, games or apps to your circles on Google Plus, in an email, or via text message.

Sharing music on Google Plus will include the ability to listen or buy:

Sharing books can be done while reading from any page:

Watching a movie or reading an e-book can continue seamlessly across all of these:

To date, a few industry analysts have been hinting that Google Plus suffers from a lack of use by the over 10 million registered users.  With the implementation of Google Play, and the limited sharing available, it seems like Google is devising a strategy to boost interaction within Google Plus.  It also encourages users to be logged into their Google accounts from multiple devices, which can have an affect on how search engine results appear, and offer more opportunities to +1 content on the web.  Overall this change in the android market has many underlying benefits for all of Google’s latest products.