Google+ wants to usher in the masses with sharing-focused TV spot

Google's decision to run a commercial for its Google+ social network during yesterday's Lions-Packers game. Google's social networking effort, Google+, is looking for users and took to the commercial break of the Thanksgiving Day .

Television doesn't exactly have a fabulous track record as a vehicle for promoting Web sites. The TV spot, which can be seen below, ran for 90 seconds and focused on the theme of sharing. About TV ads for Web properties, what springs to mind are all those pricey Super Bowl spots for Web 1.0 sites that flopped.

Google+'s most prominent sharing feature is, of course, Circles, which allows users to share photos, links, video and use it to share stuff with other user. It wants to take on Facebook directly and rapidly, in a way that no other company could dream of doing.

The TV spot's tagline is "Sharing but like real life." That continues the sales pitch that Google has made for Google+ from the beginning. How can a website and phone app (Android and iOS only for now) allow you to share online as you would in the real, tangible-not-digital world? Again, you build groups of friends and share selectively with them, makes online sharing feel more natural than it does on Facebook.

Instead of being a place, it can be the social glue that ties together Google's search engine, Gmail, Google Apps, and scads of other services that hundreds of millions of people already use.

After watching the ad, are you going to use Google+ more? Or even sign up for those who haven't yet given Google+ a shot? For one thing, if the feature is so alluring, it's easy enough for Facebook to play it up more than it did in the pre-Google+ era.