Google+ will allow multiple admins to manage a brand page “before 2012,” Kristoffer Sorensen, a Google marketing strategist, said on in a live Q&A on Wednesday.

Currently, brand pages are tied to one admin account that has total control over the page and profile. This has been a point of frustration for social media managers who have multiple team members updating their company social profiles.

Google has released yet another TV commercial to help demonstrate the features of its new social network, Google+. Like the other marketing efforts, the ad is slick, polished and even sort of funny. Unfortunately, it also demonstrates everything that’s wrong with Google+ in a just minute’s time. In fact, if the video hadn’t been posted to Google’s own YouTube channel, you may have almost wondered if it was a parody put out by Facebook PR.

The ad, published the day prior to Thanksgiving in the U.S., tells the tale of two Google+ users, Kyle and Lisa. In it, Kyle places Lisa into his “Love of My Life” Circle while Lisa puts Kyle in her own unfortunately named “Creepers” Circle. Oh, poor Kyle! Over time, though, it becomes clear that Lisa and Kyle’s relationship changes, as the ad shows Lisa moving Kyle into a variety of other Circles, including “Book Club,” “Guys With Cars” (shallow much, Lisa?), “Ski House,” “Maybes” and finally, “Keepers.” Cue the awwwwww’s, right?

Google‘s proliferation of the +1 button continued Wednesday as the company added the feature to image searches.

The button, which was introduced in March as an answer to Facebook’s “Like,” is equivalent to a stamp of approval from Google users. Over the past few months, +1s have appeared next to news articles, on websites and even in ads.

Google Plus started out growing faster than any social network has so far, but may not be able to compete against Facebook longer term.

The appeal is not sticking because many of the people that quickly flocked to Google Plus have made their way back to the comfort and familiarity of Facebook.

In fact, the inability to keep users engaged has some observers wondering just how long Google Plus will be able to survive.

Last Thursday, Google announced that Google+ will be available for Google Apps users. This means that the millions of people using Google Apps for their businesses will now have access to the Google+ social collaboration platform.

With Google+’s unique features for search, selective sharing and rich communication, it offers consumers a very different user experience than the established social networks. For individuals, Google+ has quickly become a great place to build your interest graph — that is, find the latest content and people related to topics you’re interested in.

With its seamless integration with Google Apps, Google+ promises a very different type of social enterprise experience. In fact, Google+ has five unique advantages over other social business platforms.

Google has announced that Google+ will support Google Apps accounts within the next few days.

Google SVP of social Vic Gundotra said Google Apps support was coming “imminently” during a Q&A at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Gundotra made it clear that “imminently” meant within the next few days.

Traffic to Google+ spiked 1,200% in the first few days following its public launch Sept. 20, but has since plummeted by 60%, according to a report from a data analytics company.

Chitika tracked Google+ traffic before and after the social networking service opened its gates to all users.

“The data shows that, on the day of its public debut, Google+ traffic skyrocketed to peak levels. But, soon after, traffic fell by over 60% as it returned to its normal, underwhelming state,” Chitika says of its findings, as illustrated in the chart below.

Steer your way to Google.com and you’ll find yourself staring at perhaps its boldest Doodle yet. No, Google hasn’t outdone itself with another musical tribute or interactive game — it’s running an ad directing users to try out Google+. But this isn’t just your average text ad or banner: Google’s drawing a big, blue arrow that points toward your Google+ name on the left side of its top nav bar.  Click it, and you’ll launch into the Google+ homepage and signup process.

Do you still consider yourself a noob when it comes to Google’s social platform? If so, we’ve got some handy hints to help you out.

From quicker sharing options to better content curation via savvy privacy settings, we’re bringing you 10 tips and tricks that will soon have you Google Plussing like a pro.

Today, in the buildup to its f8 conference, Facebook is rolling out another key new feature: a one-way follow model called Subscriptions. It’s sort of like Twitter, sort of like Google+, and it massages one of the service’s biggest pain points for users who have a lot of friends (or who want to share their status updates broadly).

Here’s how it works. As you browse around the site, you’ll notice that some users have a button at the top of their profile that says ‘Subscribe’. Click it, and you’ll start seeing that user’s status updates in your News Feed, just as if you were their Facebook friend. But there’s a big difference: unlike normal Facebook friends, the people you subscribe to don’t have to approve your subscription request, and there’s no limit on how many people can subscribe to any given user.

Google has added a feature that allows users to share directions, hotel information and other content from Google Maps to its social network, Google+.

Specifically, Google has added support for +snippets in Maps. +Snippets, which rolled out in August, adds a link, description and thumbnail to whatever webpage you want to share to Google+. When you click on the “Share” button on the black Google+ bar, the share will be populated with a description and image.

Shane Snow is co-founder of Contently.com, an “agile publishing” platform for brands-turned-publishers and freelance journalists.

Old school SEO pros cover your ears, or be prepared to adapt your craft: Search engines are changing, and social media is a huge part of that change.

Bing, Google, and an increasing swath of nimble little search engines like Blekko and DuckDuckGo are incorporating social data into their results. This is potentially great news for new businesses trying to achieve visibility in search. It’s less great news for sites that rely heavily on link buying (illegal, but hard to catch), producing huge volumes of borderline-useless content (long-tail, content farm approach), or just really old domains (previously an SEO trump card).

If communication barriers on Google+ got you down, never fear. Google has released a tool to ensure that updates from its international user base can be easily translated.

Google Translate for Google+, released Monday, is a simple browser extension for Chrome that translates posts and comments into more than 50 languages.

Google has begun integrating Google+ into search results with public Google+ posts now appearing in Social Search. Whenever a user publicly shares a link on Google+, an annotation will show up under that link when it appears in a friend’s search results. For example, if I share a Mashable article about Google+ eliminating pseudonyms publicly on my Google+ page, users who have added me to their circles will see a note that I shared that link if they stumble upon it in Google Search.