Zuckerberg back atop Google+ (openly)

The future of Google+ as the only, open, pure, revolutionary social network was placed in jeopardy when it appeared, just a couple of days ago, that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had shut himself away on the site.
He wasn't the only famous technological face that had disappeared. So had Larry Page and several other Google luminaries.
It seems, though, that Google has had to perform a technological about-face, as its SVP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra (one of those who had allegedly shut himself away) admitted that the sudden walling off of famous faces was a mere oversight.

Why is this man smiling? Because he's owning Google+.

(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Gundotra told the Inquirer: "This was a glitch that affected a small number of people--those with very high followers and few people in their circles."
Hmm, so the problem was that the technology couldn't deal with people who attracted vast amounts of love and gave little in return. The rest of the world has that problem too.
Some might be unconvinced by Google's explanation. They might imagine that somewhere there was a change of mind--perhaps spurred by manipulative PR advisers. They might question why, at the time of Zuckerberg's disappearance, Facebook didn't say: "Oh, no, he didn't shut himself off. Mark wouldn't do that. Except maybe on Facebook."
The official Facebook statement when I asked was: "We're in the early days of making the Web more social, and there are opportunities for innovation everywhere."
I prefer to believe that this temporary Google+ vanishing act was, indeed, a mere glitch. I prefer to bathe in the fact that, according to Social Statistics--a site that has become one of the high churches of Google+ stats--Zuckerberg has more than 184,000 followers, putting him far ahead in the Google+ chart.
In second place is Google CEO Larry Page with almost 95,000. In third, Sergey Brin with almost 72,000. Mathematicians will conclude that the Facebook CEO has more Google+ followers than both the Google founders combined.
Still, despite all the followers, Zuckerberg doesn't seem to have shared very much at all on his rival's social network--merely one smiley picture and the claim: "I make things."
With sharing as boundless as that, I wonder whether this social-networking thing really has a future.

CNet

Zuckerberg closes off his Google+ account

Wasn't it only a week ago that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was explaining to us yet again that we're all sharing more and more things with more and more people because we need to spread more and more of our love around the world?
And wasn't it mere days ago that he became the most followed human being on Google+?
I feel sullied beyond my normal coping mechanisms to tell you that he suddenly seems to have closed off his Google+ account from public eyes and disappeared from the Google+ popularity charts.

The new, happier Google+ Mark Zuckerberg account.

(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

The Inquirer seems to have been the first to notice that Facebook's CEO has become curiously coy.
Moreover, Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, the stat man for Social Statistics, which gleefully presented the first results of Google+'s most-followed humans, offered that Zuckerberg was not alone in Coyville: "Mark Zuckerberg and Google management (Matt Cutts, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Vic Gundotra, and Marissa Mayer) all changed their profiles overnight and consequently dropped out of the Google+ top 100 list!"
Some may be pained at this news. They might have viewed Zuckerberg's entry and popularity as a fine Trojan horse infiltrating Google's new playground. I did, indeed, contact Facebook to see whether there might be some official explanation for this depressing, Howard Hughesian moment. This is the company's most cryptic reply: "We're in the early days of making the Web more social, and there are opportunities for innovation everywhere."
Of course, there will be some who will marvel at the lovely mental compartmentalization of someone who last year cheerily made lists of Facebook friends terribly public, thereby exempting them (until the usual uproar) from privacy settings. On Google+, however, we have no idea who Zuckerberg's friends might now be. (Oh, look. The Google+ default is to make your friends public, too.)
A few might be cheered, however, that Zuckerberg appears to have replaced the rather deer-in-the-camera-lights picture he had originally posted to Google+ with something more relaxed, more dignified, more brand-appropriate.
He's smiling now, you see. He doesn't fear Google+ anymore. He's just worried what some people might want to share with him, that's all

CNet