Google+ Gives Early Platform Access to Brands

Google+ today took another step toward being a social platform by announcing it had enabled six social media management tools — Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, Hootsuite, Involver and Vitrue — to plug into brand pages (Involver, for its part, says it will limit participation to 20 hand-selected customers). The partners are getting fairly limited tools (Circle management, publishing and monitoring), but it means that brands will be able to use the same tools for multiple social networks.