Barcelona & Chelsea Become One of the First to Join Google+

FC Barcelona and Chelsea FC have made the most of Google’s announcement that they will start accepting business pages again on their platform by being one of the first to join the Google+ platform along with Burberry and Pepsi.

It is considered a fantastic coup for the Spanish and English clubs who will take advantage of all the social media benefits of being one of the first ones to join. No doubt other major clubs like Real Madrid, Man City and Liverpool will follow suit in the near future but many will be sitting back and waiting to see how it can work for a club as some doubt the impact of the platform.

Barca announced the news on its website under the headline “Strategic agreement between FC Barcelona and Google+”. Chelsea have yet to make any such announcement despite going live at the same time.

FC Barcelona’s New Technologies Director, Dídac Lee, said: “It’s good news that FC Barcelona is present at the worldwide launch of Google+ Pages.” Lee added, “this strategic agreement with Google+ is further proof our commitment to Barça’s global audience.”

So far the page has gained over 4,000 followers and had over 900 +1′s.  Content wise the club announced their arrival with a welcome message to fans; “Welcome to the Official FC Barcelona Google + Page, stay up to date with Club and follow all the new developments”.  The only other content is 11 photo’s from the Atletico Bilbao game yesterday.  Chelsea have only 579 followers currently and added a few photos.

There has been some criticism about how well the platform will work and some comments have been less than flattering.  Users activity on the site has certainly dipped since the public launch but it still accounts for some 40m user accounts.

Other sports teams that have launched with Google+ include Boston Celtics, Phoenix Suns, Milwaukee Bucks, Phoenix Mercury, Dallas Cowboys, WWE and Portland Trailblazers.