A Look into the Social Platform of Google - Google Plus

Introduction -

Just like any other common and popular social platforms available in the market like facebook or twitter, Google’s attempt to capture the audience's in this particular market is by the way of introducing its product Google Plus which essentially is a social networking platform offered by Google to its audiences to collaborate, interact and share important updates and events that happen in their work or personal lives with teammates or people outside their existing network too. Users of Google Plus can share their content with other people across the world.

Google Plus is basically popular among users because it allows a certain level of flexibility in terms of people engagement and control. Different features that exist in Google Plus allow users to filter out irritating background noise which is an unavoidable aspect of many other social networking platforms like facebook and twitter. There is also the ability to restrict marketing advertisements from using this platform for reaching audiences which in its way creates noise for people using this platform for only collaboration or interaction purposes. Another advantage of Google Plus is that it integrates neatly with other Google products facilitating smooth navigation between them.

The Key Features of Google Plus -

1. Circles - This is the most important feature of Google Plus which is known as Circles. This is where users can organize their connection into specific groups called Circles with their friends, family, work colleagues, etc. A notification is sent to the person whom you add to your circle. However, the difference that exists is building these circles in Google Plus from Facebook is that whenever one sends a friend request on Facebook and the other person accepts it, it inherently becomes a two-way communication but that is not the case in Google Plus where even if you add someone to your circle, the other person has the ability not to get added to your circle or not to add you into their own circles if they do not want. One can also allocate members to more than one group or create circle within circles to add to the flexibility and control.

2. Posts / The Stream - Sharing updates or information of interests with other people in your circle is called posting. One can also choose who sees those posts. The Stream is similar to the news feed feature of facebook where people can see posts from their circle. People can also comment on the posts if they want to. Customization of The Stream is also possible to only show posts from specific circles by the settings option. These settings provide a wide range of customization options throughout Google Plus in general.

3. Hangouts -  Hangouts is the video and audio conferencing tool available in the G Suite package itself which Google Plus users can use to have group interaction by means of instant messaging or video. A total of 10 users can be involved in such a group interaction at a time. Hangouts is the replacement for Google Chat. A free SMS feature may also be made available from Google in the upcoming months.

4. The +1 Button - This button of Google Plus is similar to the Like option of Facebook wherein users can click on it against any post or picture to show their approval of that post in their circle.

5. Search within Google Plus -  Searching directly from Google Plus for people, posts or resources is also possible.

6. Hashtag - Google Plus also has a feature in which it automatically scans the posts to provide a relevant or trending hashtag which actually mimics the common protocol that is used in microblogging sites like Twitter. However, this feature can also be deactivated from the user end.

7. Ripples - Ripples is a feature that provides a graphical analysis of how a post has been re-shared among people and it also gives other data such as time-lapse analysis.

8. Google Plus Pages - This feature is similar to the Facebook pages or LinkedIn pages and this allows for creating a custom brand page into Google Plus.

9. Google Plus Local - This feature actually provides pages where customers can actually interact with businesses locations like they can submit reviews about a particular outlet of a shop or food joint etc. A business can register its details like address, contact details etc and then can claim their location. This feature also makes that particular business to be shown up on Google maps and it will also be shown up as results of local searches in Google. Google Places is soon going to be merged and integrated with Google Plus Local.

10. Google Plus Communities - Just like groups in Linkedin, communities in Google Plus allow users to interact around a specific topic or topic of shared interest. It can be used to promote awareness about a brand, demonstrate expertise or communicate with customers.

11. Cloud Integration - Google has come up with some photo improvements that will be reflected in Google Plus as well which includes auto enhancements and cloud integration. With full-sized photos, one will get 15gb of cloud storage space and with standard size photos, one will get unlimited space.

12. Photo Editing Tools - There is a highlight feature by which Google can automatically choose the best photos and pinpoints images which are blurry or are having bad exposure. It also selects the most important images of yours based on the people in the photo. There are new editing and customization features also available like skin softening, noise reduction and auto enhance, etc. HDR Smile feature will select images in which people are smiling. Motion Pano feature will stitch multiple images together.