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The New York Times says Starbucks, “Updates its Google+ page for the sake of good search placement, and takes advice from Google representatives on how to optimize Google+ content for the search engine.”

While The Economist’s senior director of audience Chandra Magee did say journalists at The Economist take advantage of Google+ features like Hangouts, she also commented on how Google+ improves the brand’s SEO efforts. “There is potential there [on Google+] to help us get in front of new audiences,” Magee told the New York Times, “But it also helps with our SEO strategy because our posts on Google+ actually show up in our search engine results.”

The New York Times says nearly half of 540 million monthly active users on Google+ do not visit the social network.

Convincing casual social media users that something like Airtime isn't just speed dating is a hard sell. Blame Chatroulette, mid-'90s AOL chat rooms or Grindr, but meeting strangers through technology not for sex still feels inescapably creepy, even when it's cleverly facilitated by an app such as Glancee or Highlight. We like connecting with the people we meet in person after the fact, and even that's hard to make adequate time for. When it comes to video chat with the people we already know, there's no compelling reason to opt for Airtime over a Google+ Hangout, a Skype chat or even a Facetime call. And if you're interested in connecting with friends and family via video to begin with, odds are you've already picked your poison. Sean Parker may want to make Facebook less "boring" by inspiring serendipitous social discovery, but it's hard to imagine that Airtime isn't dead on arrival - there just isn't room for such a diluted blend of existing social tools nor is there the adventurous userbase to adopt them. We have Facebook and Facetime for the people we already know, Twitter and Google+ for the people we want to know and OkCupid and Match.com for the people we want to know, er, intimately. And for the greyer, more "serendipitous" areas? Chatroulette still boasts enough unfettered weirdness for a lifetime.