Sarah Ryan

I recently wrote a post for Bloggertone on whether Google+ is just ‘another’ social network. I discussed some of the great features that Google+ has to offer and I’d like to expand more on that here.

Basically Google+ is attractive for one of the reasons that made Facebook so attractive during the MySpace / Bebo era – it’s really clean visually. The human eye likes whitespace and despite Facebook being relatively clean, Google+ has it beat on that front hands down – plus (so far) there are NO ADs.

1. Circles

One of my favourite features of Google+ is Circles, which allows you to group your contacts, so for example I have a ‘friends’ circle and a ‘marketing people’ circle. You are also able to put contacts in multiple circles, so some people in the ‘marketing’ circle might also be in the ‘friends’ circle.  The circles you create are completely private, so while people you’ve added will receive a notification advising them you have added them to a circle, they won’t know the name of the circle.

Circles do have a limit of 5,000 people per circle, but that’s unlikely to be a problem for most of us any time soon.

2. Sharing

Having contacts divided into groups like this means that now when I post  something I can target exactly who sees it. This is a feature I’ve felt Facebook has been lacking for a long time, and it’s the reason I never connect to anyone in my professional life on Facebook, I drew the line in the sand, and for me Facebook was personal. Now however I’m able to connect with everyone I want and decide who to share each post with.

You can share every post with one, or more, of your circles, or else type in an individual’s name to send them a private message.

As with Facebook, putting @ before a person’s name will turn their name into a hyperlink – but here you can also do it by putting a + before their name (naturally).

Once you’ve posted something you have options to edit it, disable sharing (so others can’t repost it), disable comments or delete it – but currently you can’t change who you’ve shared it with.

3. Real People Only Please

Currently Google+ is for ‘real people’ only with a handful of companies being allowed to set up a business page as part of a beta testing group, both Ford and Mashable News are among those.

4. Other Standout Features

Goolge+ also has hangouts and huddles.

Hangouts are group video chats which up to 10 people can join. This is going to be a very popular feature I believe, and has an advantage over Skype as video chats between more than 2 people is currently a paid feature on Skype.

Huddles are group text chats and are being pushed as a way to organise nights out etc. without having to send 10 individual texts.

I think both of the above will be particular popular with the current school / college set. Although there are rumours that Dell is considering using the hangouts for customer service, so only time will tell how businesses will take advantage of these features.

5. +1

The +1 button when used inside of Google+ acts as a ‘like’ button.

The +1 button when used outside of Google+ on blog entries, news stories etc. acts as a bookmark and will then show up in your +1 tab on your profile. This will allow you to create an aggregated list of content to recommend to those who visit your profile.

6. Search Will Be Affected

The +1 button is everywhere and is being used 2.3 billion times per day. This is essentially making Google more intelligent as people are telling it what content on the web is interesting. Not only that, but now Google will have access to more of your social circle (it doesn’t have access to Facebook) so will return search results based not only on the +1 recommendations but also on your specific social circle.

These better quality links will result in an even higher click through rate for those at the top of the search results.

7. Still Waiting For…

Vanity URLs: Currently Google+ aren’t allowing vanity urls to be set up so currently the urls contain a lot of numbers. There are various ways around this, one being to use http://www.profiles.google.com/xxxx the xxxx being the part before the @gmail.com of your email address – of course this means that everyone will then know your email address. There are also some websites, including www.gplus.to that are offering to create vanity urls for Google+ but unless you know the company I wouldn’t recommend going there. I suspect Google themselves will offer vanity urls before very long.

Verified Accounts: There is talk that Google+ will follow in the footsteps of  Twitter and allow certain well know people to  ‘verify’ their account, thereby indicating that they are who they say they are, and given that ‘Mark Zuckerberg’ already has 3 Google+ profiles, Google will hopefully roll this feature out quickly.

Business Pages: As mentioned these are still in beta testing but hopefully they will be rolled out soon enough as well. If they integrate with other Google products e.g. Maps, Local, Deals etc. they will be powerful pages for business, and as always, the early adopters will have the advantage.

With 13 million people and counting on Google+ they certainly look set to make life uncomfortable for Facebook, as to whether it will be a ‘Facebook killer’, only time will tell.

Let me know what you think of Google+. Please also +1 this post if you liked it and don’t forget to add me to your circles!

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