But the fascination with Google+ as a would-be Facebook killer obscures the larger story about what Google+ offers.

Google+ is really two things. One is a destination for connecting with friends and subjects that interest them. When the press writes about Google+, it's usually in this context. But Google+ plays a second role, as a product that improves other products. Google tends to talk about this in abstract terms -- it's "a social spine;" it's a "fabric;" it "weaves" Google products together. Let's try to be a little more concrete about what Google+ is doing besides giving people a Facebook alternative.

Google+ is a single sign-on system. Until the social network launched in June 2011, users of various Google services used different identities for each.

Fully 65 percent of organizations pile social media on top of other responsibilities, while only 27 percent focus exclusively on the emerging platforms. Sixty-nine percent are dissatisfied or only "somewhat satisfied" with how they measure their social media effort. Only 31 percent are "satisfied" or "very satisfied."

Just 13 percent of communicators agreed that their organization was "an advanced, well-run machine," while 64 percent said they use social media regularly, but have more to learn and accomplish. Another 23 percent outed themselves as "newbies."

When the TV show The X-Factor (U.K.) put a hashtag on the screen, it generated 27,000 tweets in 90 seconds.

Note that Twitter reported a half a billion tweets per day in October, up from 140 million per day in early 2011. It’s also a different way to measure its data than Twitter had in earlier years, when it would often tout the number of tweets, but really mean “items,” in terms of shares and re-shares which have to be shown on other peoples’ timelines.

witter is ramping up on big data visualization.