The New Way to Socialize, Google+

Google shared its new way to use social media: Google+ to the world on Tuesday, as a counter challenge against its top competitor, Facebook. Google+ turned all of its search engines into one giant social network. It's a one-stop shop to communicate however you want with whomever you want. The idea is pretty cool, and introduces new features that has potential to make users fall in love with what it offers. With millions of subscribers that already use Google, this new social network has potential to grow fast and have one of the biggest followings.

Here's how Google+ design goes:

A complete redesign of the navigation bar of Google has been added. This navigation bar will now be the color black and equipped with multiple ways to access your Google+ account. Once you have logged in to Google+, you will have notifications that glow red to show the number of how many you have, the ability to view others postings, share photos, videos, links, chat, and find out locations of your friends that Google+ calls a "Stream." The network features do add a little more spunk than that of Facebook, with it's clean and crisp look, multiple ways to communicate, and cooler layout.

Features that make up the Google+ social network:
Features of Google+ include: +Circles, +Sparks, +Hangouts, +Huddle, and +Mobile. Each feature is unique in its own little way and has the ability to draw in users to absolutely love what it does, but may remind you of a slight upgrade of what you've already been exposed to. This could be a good thing for Google+, as it shows competitors they can take an idea and made it better.

+Circles provides a new way to distinguish who you want to share information with. You have the ability to classify the importance or non-importance of friends, group people into the categories like family, co-workers, best buds etc. Whatever you post to that circle like photos, videos, links, and updates, will only be seen by that circle. Although Facebook has groups, (you can send messages to a specific group), Google+ made the idea better by giving the user more capabilities and gadgets to socialize with friends. To add friends to a specific circle, you simply click on their icon and drag them to the circle, if you want to delete the friend, a puff of smoke pops up and a minus one  (-1) appears. If you delete an entire group, the circle rolls right off the page.

+Sparks kind of takes on the functions of Google Alerts. This feature delivers all of your favorite content from the Internet that you have specified as being something of your interest. You add topics that you always want to be updated about, and you will get them sent directly to you. You'll never have to be bothered with searching the web to find out news, blogs, photos, videos etc. about the topics you like to be current on the most.

+Hangouts can be considered the best feature to the new Google+ social network. Unlike Facebook chat, Google+ has the ability to video chat with up to 10 friends, and if your hangout is full, there's a waiting list. Google felt that just having a "chat" didn't draw in social network users to want to communicate with everyone. They noticed that people do like to hangout with friends, so why not bring that hanging out feel to a social network. When you want to video chat friends simply select, "Start a Hangout". Once that's been done, you are in your own private room which has been alerted to friends that you're available to hangout. There aren't boxes all over the screen, the layout is clean and simple, as all friends can be seen at the bottom of the screen and can all talk at once. That feature does have a few good pointers on top of Skype and Facebook chat.

+Huddle is the way to chat without using video. It's supposed to grant easy access to the specific friends or groups you want to quickly address about something like going out and meeting up somewhere. Google says it's better than a text message or a call because with people being busy with work and other activities, they aren't always available to respond, but if they're online, they can join the huddle. So, you type in say for instance, "I want pizza tonight, who's down?" Then a person in the circle you addressed quickly responds, kind of like a text message, which saves time and frustrations from waiting on responses from friends.

+Mobile allows Google+ users to add locations that will be shown on their "Stream" to circles of their choice. With +Mobile you can also instantly upload photos to be shared and save them in a special folder that holds new uploads up to 8 hours and can later be loaded to the site, something like a Twitpic which is avaliable through Twitter, or a Share through Facebook, but better because it doesn't load directly to the site but to your computer before it's posted. This feature is available through the Android market and the mobile web, and soon to be featured in the App Store.

So, do you think Google+ will be a huge buzz for social networkers or will it fall victim to social networks that have already thrived and dominated the market? Surely, this is a cool new way to socialize, it has features that are slightly better than what has already been done. But, is that enough for this tough world of harsh social network users and critics? Only time can tell.

Comments

• By Bobcat on Monday, October 17, 2011
   

  Way to go on this essay, helped a ton.

  Way to go on this essay, helped a ton.