What you need to know about Google+
Here at Promote we’re extremely excited about the latest project to come fizzling and flashing out of Google’s weboratory - Google+. Feedback from the online community has been tentatively positive, making Google+ instantly more successful than its predecessors, Google Wave and Google Buzz.
So, whilst the majority of us on the waiting list are kept in suspense, here at Promote we thought you might appreciate a quick summary of what’s on offer. Here’s our review of the key features of Google+.
Perhaps the flagship feature of Google+, Circles solves a problem that many Facebook users have struggled with for some time – how to manage professional relationships with personal relationships.
Circles enables you to build separate circles of friends – family, work, leisure – to which you can assign different levels of privacy. Only want to share photos of a wedding with close family, but not with colleagues? You can now. Facebook has a similar ‘lists’ feature, but with Circles the process has been streamlined.
Google+ Stream
Central to Google+ is a realtime stream of user activity from you and your friends, much like Facebook’s News Feed. Nothing new here right now, but plenty of room for innovation in the coming weeks.
Combining the power of the Google search engine with social networking, Sparks is a feature that essentially recommends articles of interest from all over the web to your personal tastes and preferences. A powerful tool when combined with the Google +1 button you will have seen popping up around the web which will provide the opportunity to rank and rate pages.
Hangouts is a fantastic feature which integrates group video chat with social networking. Such ‘unplanned meet ups’ add a whole new dimension to the user experience. Although Google+ has the edge with Hangouts for now, success may be stifled by Facebook’s new deal with Skype and its launch of video chat yesterday.
A feature which shows that Google+ was designed with handheld mobile devices in mind, Huddle allows you to hold conversation streams using group-texting with each of your Circles.
Finally a feature that’s already getting lots of positive feedback - Instant Upload. This synchronises any photo or video from your mobile with your Google+ account – so it’s all automatically stored in a private area. You can then share photos or video with any of the contacts in your Circles.
For those lucky ones who have already received an invite (ours must have been lost in the post) let us know what you think, and for everyone else keen to get started you can sign up here to join the waiting list. Let’s hope it’s worth the wait!