Mashable's Google+ Profile Morphs Into Pete Cashmore

Posted on July 22, 2011

Google+ Product Manager Christian Oestlien asked businesses to refrain from creating Google+ profiles earlier this month. At the time several brands, including Mashable and Ford, already had set-up Google+ profiles for their brands.

Google removed Mashable, Ford, Sesame Street and other brands from Google+ earlier this week. This is what Google had said it was going to do to the brands on Google+.

Despite being removed, Mashable has not completely left Google+. The Google+ profile was converted into Pete Cashmore, the founder of Mashable. Cashmore was able to retain the Mashable profile's 100,000 followers during the name change.

The ability to keep his followers gives Cashmore and the Mashable team a bit of an advantage over companies that are unable to create business profiles until Google lets them. Pete Cashmore does say Mashable will launch a business profile from scratch once business accounts are available, but in the meantime he already has a popular profile to promote Mashable from.

GigaOm explains why Google+ brand pages are such a big deal (before they even exist) here