Explore Google Plus

Google with the launch of its brand new social project Google plus has indicated its intentions to grab share in the Facebook’s social network of more than 500 million active users. Will it work? Not sure but it looks like the best version of social that they have ever done (as compared to its much hyped Google Wave and Buzz). They have put together a core group of social products and a new navigation bar that integrates sharing and conversations into every single Google Product.
Alike Facebook, Google has also focused on Privacy Settings,  and emphasizing that Google plus will let users to bifurcate what they want to share and with whom they want to share.
The design and UI is much better than normal Google products, but it still retains the elegant & “normal” Google look with plenty of white space.
The usability of the interface looks easy enough and thus reflecting their efforts to made it as good as possible. They have also re-considered simple things like adding people to your Circle of friends, this makes the whole experience much more streamlined.
Google is addressing it a Project rather then a Product to allow for movement and changes rather than saying this is the final product or beta version. This will allow them to add new features and combine features if needed.

Following are few couple of the elements that Google has put forth in this Project.

Google + Stream

This is the main section of Google Plus. It doesn’t bring anything that we haven’t seen to the table, it is rather like the Facebook or Twitter stream, but it is well touched and doesn’t make me feel as crowded as my Facebook stream.

Google + Circles

Circles are cool. Just select the friends or colleagues and drag them to an existing circle or a new circle and you are done. This is much easier than using the lists and groups features on Twitter and Facebook. Like Facebook lists these groups shall and can be used while managing privacy settings.

Google + Profiles

Google profiles used to be less interesting and I hope that this makes it better. Google Plus enables you to port your existing profile over into the new profile.

Google + Hangouts

This is one of the coolest things. Google plus Hangouts are where you can hangouts when you have 2 minutes free and you want to talk to your friends. Any friends that hangout with you, you can see on a group chat. If Google plus gets going this might be the best feature. I am sure that they will have a notification system at some point that will allow you to see on your navigation bar if someone is hanging out. This I would say is a direct shot across the bow of Skype and of course now Microsoft.

Google + Photos

There are lots of ways of sharing photos on the internet. Facebook has screwed around with the layouts of photos. There are lots of cool ways of sharing photos like instagram and the like. But Google has gone into this tentatively with Google plus Photos. They allow you to edit photos and they have an instant upload feature. Again they allow you to integrate your existing Picasa account with your Google Plus account. They need to bring out more features like instagram that will allow you to make the photos more artistic.

Google + Huddle

Group messaging is cool and was made prolific by Blackberry. Now that Blackberry is going downhill really fast, where are we going to get our group messaging from? Well Google’s answers to it will be Google plus Huddle.
This, if done well good take market share from BBM, whatsapp, Skype, and all the other players in this arena. This will also allow people who have never liked Blackberry (like me) to be able to have a conversation with all my friends no matter what phone they might have.

Starting today Google+ is available on Android Market and the mobile web, and it’s coming soon to the App Store.

FAQs

So is it good?
–Well Yes!
Will it kill Facebook?
–Well… Not sure. I don’t think so yet.
Will it frighten the current social networks?
–Absolutely because Google has power. Google has money. Google has a lot of data to pull info from.
Will it be another Google Buzz or Google Wave?
–God I hope not.

Lets us know what do you think about Google Plus. Answers above questions in your comments.

Source: Google Blog