Google+, Google What?

| 0 comments

Social media has come a long way quickly over the years, from MySpace to Facebook, to Twitter and anything else in between. You share photos, videos, thoughts; your current employment situation, or if your relationship is complicated or not. Social media allows people in the same field of work to connect with one another and share ideas, information, and possible employment opportunities, and it has even helped make significant social change in places around the world.

Recently, there’s a new social media website that’s come into town, and it’s starting to get some attention, and though very new, it could have the potential to bring some heat, especially to Facebook. This is Google+.

If you haven’t heard of Google+ yet, then you should check it out. Of course, you can’t just join, not yet anyways. It’s by way of invitation only, or through the use of sending specific posts to those who haven’t joined yet, and they’ll receive an email with a link to sign up.

Personally, I found out about Google+ around a week or so ago through Twitter one morning. At the end of the day, I had two invites!

Google+ is much like Facebook in that you can send out posts, photos, videos, and share as little or as much information about yourself as you want, and you can put in restrictions as to who sees what.

Your friends however, are grouped into what’s called Circles – such as Friends, Coworkers, Family, etc. – and you can share your posts with all your circles, specific circles, extended circles, or even to the general public.

Google+ also has a feature much like Facebook’s “like” or Twitter’s “share”. It’s called +1, and you can +1 posts that people in your circles share. However, you can also +1 on other websites, and these will show up under your +1s on your profile – for example, if you +1 a YouTube video.

There’s other features too, including Hangouts and Sparks, which I have yet to use.

So far, I’ve only made a few posts on Google+, but I find myself checking it daily for some reason. There’s not a whole lot of activity, but even if I don’t check it, I often check my Gmail, and Google’s new black bar has a notification box on the right that lights up in red with the number of Google+ notifications inside it. Handy!

I don’t think Google+ is quite where it needs to be yet to be serious competition, but if anyone can turn it into something big, it would be Google. Only time will tell!