Mobile World Congress: Google’s EMEA head of mobile Ian Carrington is broadening his role to lead the company’s social efforts in the UK and popularise Google+ among brands and publishers.
In addition to his mobile efforts, Carrington is working to get more brands to build Google+ pages and get more publishers to incorporate the Google+ button on their web properties.Speaking to new media age at Mobile World Congress (MWC), Carrington (pictured) said he was interfacing between Google’s UK product development and sales teams internally so they can promote the Google+ proposition to the market.
“A big part of what I’m working on now is social,” he said. “It’s not a big decision to merge the two [mobile and social] across Google, it’s just that social [Google+] is like mobile was two years ago when we launched it. That went well and now I’m doing the same with social.”
Carrington highlighted Google’s video and chat service Hangouts as a useful engagement tool, citing a recent David Beckham Hangout as part of a clothing tie up with H&M as a particular example of how brands can use the service (see video below).
“We’re also pushing Circles as a big thing,” he said.
Meanwhile, Carrington is also using his time at MWC to help highlight research released yesterday revealing that 4% of UK users are now engaging in some form of m-commerce on a daily basis and 14% on a weekly basis.
However, while the statistics clearly show an appetite for m-commerce, most big brands still don’t have a mobile website. Google’s statistics reveal that only 10% of its top advertisers had a mobile-optimised site globally. In the UK, this rose to 24%.
Separately, Google chairman Eric Schmidt is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at MWC later this evening.
