What you need to know about Google+
Google+ is a social network, like Facebook, but brought to you by the world’s #1 search engine.
It was released on June 28, 2011. It’s still a baby but already gaining a mass audience. Right now it is in beta. Beta means “Test Kitchen” basically so it is invite-only and not open to the public just yet.
What can you do with Google+?
Interact and share with friends, post anything and everything, and +1 the heck outta the things you love.
You will start seeing this little button EVERYWHERE you go online:
Next to results on Google searches, on websites (like shook.com), on articles, basically everything. It works like the “Like” button on Facebook. It is a way for people to say, “Hey, this is cool!” or “Sweet!”, or whatever you exclaim out loud or in your head when your browsing online and you come across something you enjoy. But instead of mumbling it under your breath for only your cat to hear you can press this little button and tell everyone. It’s show-and-tell on a global level.
How do you participate?
In order to +1 something you must have a Google profile, they are easy to set up and as soon as you do you can start inviting your friends, family, people you barley know, etc. It’s a standard profile like any other one you’ve ever filled out so don’t be nervous. There’s nothing new as far as that goes.
Now you have your profile you can start adding people and you also get to add them to different “Circles”.
Circles are groups of people you clump together based on whatever categorizations you desire. Friends, Family, Work Friends, People I Met at Comic-Con, etc. For example if you want to share a photo of little Jimmy’s first steps but only with your family you can do that. Or you can share those guilty pleasure photos of you dressed up as Doctor Manhattan with your Comic-Con buddies. It allows you to easily customize who you share things with.
Once you’ve added your friends you create your circles by dragging and dropping them into the Circles you have created. It looks like this:
You just place your cursor over your friends little box and drag it down into the appropriate circle.
See, easy-peasy.
So now you want to share something:
A home page looks like this:
Add what you want to share, select who you want to see it and then post it. Viola!
Google Search:
When you search for something on Google you’ll notice the little +1 button we talked about earlier next to your search results. If you hit the +1 button you are saying you like that page and are recommending it to everyone. Now when someone visits your Google profile page they can see a list of all your +1’s.
Google+ is not yet built for businesses but it is working on a platform specifically for them.
What is different about Google+?
Well it’s the new next big thing, and we all know how people like to hype stuff up, all the usual suspects adopt early and then we wait and see what happens. The thing that sets Google+ apart is that it is built around our digital online lives and helps us interact easier with the people we want to share with and lets us customize our networks with ease. Plus, (so far) there are none of those pesky applications. In my opinion it is a more grown-up version of Facebook. But only time will tell whether or not someone has finally created a social network with the ability to eclipse Facebook and change the way we interact online.
For more information check out this awesome demo from Google.
Have fun!
Adrienne
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