By Saroj Kar and Kristen Nicole

If you haven’t joined Google+, it’s time to get started. Guy Kawasaki has launched his latest eBook – What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us, in which he compares the new social network to Apple (in a very good way).  An original Apple employee, Kawasaki notes the accelerated development of Google+ and provides all the keys to making good use of this media outlet, complete with examples and screenshots.

The new eBook is an easy read, entertaining as always, but more importantly, it will accompany you in the discovery of Google+’s often overlooked perks. What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us is already available as an e-book on Kindle, iBook, Google Play, Nook and Amazon, but it’s also one of the few e-books to gain the attention of a traditional publishing house.  McGraw-Hill was quick to take up the torch for Kawasaki’s latest book, selling it as a paperback for all the OG bookworms out there.

For those who don’t know Guy Kawasaki, he began his career as a jeweler. But it was a small brand named Apple and his work with Steve Jobs that drove his professional advancement. Since then, Kawasaki has become one of the most influential entrepreneurs in the world, making his mark as the Chief Evangelist at Apple.

Guy’s previous book, “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions,” talks about enchantment as a formula that every company should have to woo and persuade their business prospect. The book promises to reveal the secrets to master the art of changing hearts, minds and actions.

Apples and Oranges

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Google+ is more than just a portal site.  It’s a social layer designed to unify and coordinate the various Google products, from Gmail to YouTube, and customize the results of its search engine. In other words, with the information that you provide on your profile, Google will offer optimized search results that are more tailored to your interests.

The innovation and potential behind Google+ is what really caught Kawasaki’s eye.

“When I saw Macintosh for the first time it was somewhat of a religious experience for me,” said Kawasaki during a talk at the Google+ Photographer’s Conference. “Fast forward about 25 years and I had a second religious experience — which is when I saw Google+ for the first time.”

And to convince the non-believers, here’s a short excerpt Kawasaki writes in his book:

“As my mother used to say: Sometimes you have to see it to believe it, so here is why I believe Google + before seeing 800 million people.” He continues. “From my perspective, Google+ is to Facebook and Twitter what Macintosh is to Windows: Better, but fewer people use it, and the pundits prophesy that it will fail. As a lover of great products, this rankles my soul.”

Why the excitement?

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Guy likes the design aesthetics of Google+, feels it’s better in terms of notifications as well as posting options.  One very obvious feature with Google+ is that, after you post something, you can edit it anytime. That is true of both posts and comments, and it’s a feature you won’t find on Twitter or Facebook.

Kawasaki thinks the way Google+ put pictures inline is very well done, and the end result of its design and usability is a quality community experience, much higher quality than engagement on Facebook and Twitter.

Google+ also has an SEO impact that is truly comprehensible, seeing as Google is the stream most of us drink from on a daily basis.  The social network has been incorporated into Google search, your friends and the people you circle when they have posted about a topic. If Facebook is for friends and family, and Twitter to stay informed with the latest news, Google+ is for people looking to follow their passions, Kawasaki says. For entrepreneurs or small business owners, this seems to be the place to be.

“I use all social media for a marketing tool and people don’t like to hear this when I sait it, but this is a business for me.  It isn’t pleasure,” Kawasaki says.  “So one thought is, if you look at the various social media, Facebook is for people, primarily people you already know, and Twitter is primarily for perspectives.  Google+ is for passions.

“The passions I developed on Google+ don’t work on Facebook, and it’s difficult to develop a passion on Twitter.”

Great for marketers

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One of the strengths of Google+ is the ability to create “circles,” in which you can add people you personally know and those you do not know. You can define circles very differently from each other: circle of family, friends, relationships, professional, football fans, or music.  You can even create a circle for your own use, bookmarking items across the web to build a collection that’s accessible via search at a later date.

Unlike Facebook, Google will select the areas where it will offer advertising, and those in which it refrain – it will offers the pages of a family photo albums.

When Google introduced the concept of “social search,” it turned SEO upside down. Now when people search on Google, they see the actions of their friends on Google+. That’s huge for marketers, as Kawasaki suggests in his book.

Kawasaki thinks businesses should jump on Google+ because it’s the Wild West, so you can stake your claim, as opposed to breaking through the noise on Twitter and Facebook.  Businesses can start following that people in their industry to find out what they’re doing, and start posting and commenting to build a community around their passion.  And of course, every once in a while you hit people up with a promotion or two.

Kawasaki’s not the only one that’s noticed Google+’s potential for business marketing. According to research by SocialShare, three out of four brands now have profiles on Google Plus. Moreover, more than 100 new brands have joined the social networking site in the last two months.

Google+ beats Facebook

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Another report by CIO in conjunction with customer analytics company Foresee, revealed that Facebook user satisfaction fell by 8 percent to its lowest point of 61 percent, compared to 73 percent on Google+ over the past 12 months.

Currently, the platform has about 250 million users and 60 percent or 150 million users actively login in and off. It is also estimated that users base would reach 450 million by the end of 2012.

And Kawasaki thinks that, in the end, Google+ will prevail. “It’d be a bold prediction, but I think [Google+] will be the leading social network.”

It’s easy to brush of Google+ as yet another project from the Mountain View company, but the growth of Google+ and the resources being dedicated to this new network show Google’s promise.  And to those that have swept Google+ under the rug, Kawasaki thinks they should apply the same logic to Google+ as they do to Facebook.

“If someone said to you, ‘I just learned about this new social network, and in its first year it got 250 million new users,’ you’d say ‘Wow, that’s successful!’ But say it’s Google and they say, ‘Aww, it’s gonna fail.  It’s much smaller than Facebook,'” Kawasaki explains.

“The same thing happened with Mac.  They had 5 percent market share.  Ten percent market share, and people hear the numbers and say ‘Great!’ Then find out it’s Apple and say ‘It’s gonna die.'”

There’s still time yet to see which social network will be the ultimate winner, or if there even needs to be an ultimate winner at all.  The determining factor will revolve around search and monetization, and this is an area in which Google is well versed, and Facebook is struggling, especially since going public and having to report to shareholders quarterly. Google’s experience in search and monetization leads Kawasaki to believe that they offer more value to consumers, and subsequently businesses, than Facebook, Twitter or even Pinterest.

Contributors: Saroj Kar