Google+ Adds Restricted Communities In An Effort To Court Business Users

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Many businesses have now adopted tools like Yammer or Podio, but Google+ also wants a piece of this social enterprise action. While Google’s social network started courting enterprise users more than a year ago by adding restricted posts and a number of other business features, it’s going a step further today by launching restricted communities. This adds an extra layer of security on top of the usual enterprise tools and ensures that only users within a given company can join this group and see the updates in it.

This removes the chance that an employee accidentally shares notes about a new product or other confidential information on Google+ by accident. Everything that’s posted in a community stays there, after all.

Given that most businesses aren’t likely to use Google+ for their internal communication as long as there is a risk of information leaking out by accident, this is a major step for Google+ in getting more business users on board.

Users can choose whether a community is open to everyone at the company or private, as well as whether it is joinable or invite-only. Administrators can set restricted communities to be the default for an organization, but users can always choose another setting, too.

In today’s announcement, Google stresses that businesses can use these communities to share files, videos, events and photos – something that most of the other social business tools also offer.

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