You may have noticed a few tweets flying around Twitter (#googleplus) relating to Google+, Google's latest attempt at Social Networking or even some articles in the tech sections of newspapers. Well, it's still in beta and I haven't got my invite yet but I thought I'd post some quotes and videos surrounding it
The basic premise behind Google+ is that it turns the search engine into one big Social network.Here are the key elements to it:
Circles
If you're like me, you may sometimes have to carefully consider the people on your Facebook network before publishing. Who will I upset? Who will not get it? Well,according to Mashable:
That’s where Google+ begins to diverge from Facebook, though. The focus of this social project is not on sharing with a mass group of friends, but on targeted sharing with your various social groups. To do this, Google uses a system called Circles.
And they go on to say, that whilst Twitter and Facebook have attempted to solve this problem using lists, they haven't been entirely successful.
Google+ Circles is an attempt to address that challenge. The HTML5 system allows users to drag-and-drop their friends into different social circles for friends, family, classmates, co-workers and other custom groups. Users can drag groups of friends in and out of these circles.
One of the nice things about the product is its whimsical nature — a puff of smoke and a -1 animation appears when you remove a friend, and when you remove a social circle, it rolls away off the screen.
According to Google:
The problem is that today’s online services turn friendship into fast food—wrapping everyone in “friend” paper—and sharing really suffers:
- It’s sloppy. We only want to connect with certain people at certain times, but online we hear from everyone all the time.
- It’s scary. Every online conversation (with over 100 “friends”) is a public performance, so we often share less because of stage fright.
- It’s insensitive. We all define “friend” and “family” differently—in our own way, on our own terms—but we lose this nuance online.
http://youtu.be/watch?v=BeMZP-oyOII=640&h=390
Hangouts
One other area that Google have looked is video. They have come up with something called hangouts, which allow people to meet up with others in, you could say, a video chta room. Here's what Mashable has to say about it:
The video chat feature might be one of the most interesting aspects of Google+. Gundotra and his team thought about why group chat hasn’t become a mainstream phenomenon. He compared it to knocking on a neighbor’s door at 8 p.m. — most people don’t do it because it isn’t a social norm. However, if a group of friends are sitting on a porch and you just happen to walk by, it’s almost rude not to say hi.
And Google says:
With Google+ we wanted to make on-screen gatherings fun, fluid and serendipitous, so we created Hangouts. By combining the casual meetup with live multi-person video, Hangouts lets you stop by when you're free, and spend time with your Circles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tku1vJeuzH4=640&h=390
Sparks
http://youtu.be/watch?v=MRkAdTflltc=640&h=390
Instant Upload
http://youtu.be/watch?v=6y_xKVSRAy8=640&h=390
Related Articles
Google’s Facebook Competitor, The Google+ Social Network, Finally Arrives (Search Engine Land)
Google Launches Google+ To Battle Facebook (Mashable)
Google+ hands on: laboured stuff
Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web (Official Google Blog)
Google Tries (Again) to Get Social With Google+ Project(Search Engine Watch)
