Rob’s Radar 7/26

Google+ Business Profiles Coming Soon
In a few short months, Google’s social network Google+ will debut enhanced profiles for businesses, complete with analytics and more sophisticated sharing options.
http://technology.inc.com/2011/07/26/google-business-profiles-coming-soon/

Five Things I Learned At MySpace That Could Help Google+
This is just a guess, but I’d bet money that Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz probably feel like their heads are going to explode. Anyone on the Google+ team who really cares about G+ is probably getting very little sleep, and are annoying their friends and family with their one-track G+ minds. There’s been such an amazing amount of feedback, the Google+ team can’t help but be overwhelmed—and what we see is just on the site and in the press. Imagine what’s coming into that “send feedback” inbox that’s at the bottom of every G+ page?
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/26/five-things-myspace-google-plus/

Patent Troll Sues Amazon Over Electronic Checkout Service
After slapping Google and PayPal with patent lawsuits, patent troll Purple Leaf is going after Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of infringing on its “311 patent” via Amazon’s Payments product. We’ve embedded the complaint below.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/26/patent-troll-sues-amazon-over-electronic-checkout-service/

Assistly’s Pricing Gamble: A Case Study in Freemium
At last week’s True University startup school event at Berkeley, Alex Bard, CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Assistly, moderated a session on freemium business models; his panel of startup veterans spent an hour delving into the pros and cons of offering free products as a way to drum up new business. It turns out the subject wasn’t just a theoretical one for Bard. This week Assistly, which offers a Web-based customer support platform similar to Zendesk, significantly overhauledthe way it charges for the service. It made the first seat free for all customers, and greatly simplified its prices for other levels of service.
http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2011/07/26/assistlys-pricing-gamble-a-case-study-in-freemium/