Will it be just another social networking site . . . ? Or with the backing of the Google brand and some added features and benefits, could this be the dawn of a new age of Enterprise capable social networking?

Having already exceeded its maximum allocation of users within 2 days of its test launch, there is obviously a demand to see what’s new and where Google is going to go with this. After the failure of its first two attempts at social networking – Wave and Buzz – I’m sure Google is giddy with delight at this kind of initial response from users.


But what’s new . . .

Google have introduced five main features to Google+

Circles – Unlike facebook, Google is providing the ability to group your ‘friends’. As an example you will be able to group your work mates separately from your family, friends or high school buddies; allowing you to choose what and how you share with each group.

Huddle – This allows a group chat functionality, instead of having several one on one chats. A particularly useful function for planning events or discussing a central topic with a number of people.

Hangouts – A video chat function, which allows users to see who’s online and chat face to face. Similar in nature to Skype but integrated with your ‘friends’ lists.

Sparks – Similar to an RSS feed, sparks will look for videos or articles it thinks you might like and if they take your fancy, have them ready for you to view anytime .

Instant Uploads – There is nothing particularly new with the concept of uploading photos and videos to social media sites from your mobile devices. But with smart phones running Google’s Android and Google+, you don’ even have to think about uploading because all the hard work is automatically done for you. All you have to do is log in afterwards and publish for your ‘friends’ to be able to view.

What does Google+ mean for the business world . . .

Looking only at the basic functionalities as described above there are numerous possibilities for integration into the business world. With instant uploads you have your very own ‘live feed’ to your social media site keeping your ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ up to date by the minute. With circles you will be able to group users based on preference or practice thus allowing you to send targeted information or marketing materials. Sparks will prove to be useful with up to date media related to your fields of interest, which you may have otherwise missed, sent straight to your account.

Unquestionably Google is targeting the consumer market with this new offering. But many industry commentators believe that there may be more to Google+ than meets the eye. With its collaborative tools and ability to build distinctly separated groups from the aggregate whole, many believe the fundamental building blocks exist for Google + to truly own the Enterprise Web, not just the Social.

Google+ and +1’s. The coming effect on search engine results . . .

What is +1’ing you ask? Google is now providing the users of Google+ with the ability to recommend or refer a website, google ad, video or image. They are calling this action +1’ing. This provides users of Google+ with the ability to make or see virtual recommendations.

The biggest overall affect that this will have is the return of search and ad results in Google’s search engine which will be annotated with the number of +1’s they have received. This will effectively provided users with the ability to gauge whether something may be of use to them simply by seeing whether their peers have previously rated it as noteworthy.

While still only in a testing phase, the response to Google+ has been strong. But once fully released, will there be this predicted mass influx of users to make this the new Facebook? One thing is for sure, Google+ is definitely something worth keeping an eye on. To visit the Google+ page and read more about its features and stay up to date with its full release, click here.

Source: Brightfox

Analysis: Google + - Putting Brands or Consumers first?

Google+ has so far resisted allowing brands to feature their own pages on the social networking platform. Murray Calder, Scottish IPA president and director MediaCom Scotland highlights the good that brands could do for Google+.

Google’s most successful foray into social media so far, Google +, recruited over 20 million users in just over two weeks.

Time will tell whether it is a worthy long-term competitor to the two behemoths of social media, Facebook and Twitter but the rate and scale of growth Google+ is achieving should keep them on their toes.

Brands have clearly shown early enthusiasm for Google+ with many jumping straight on and creating profiles, digital media owners such as Mashable, and the Ford Motor Company being notable examples. However, Google have been very clear that this incarnation of Google+ is very much for real people, not brands, to the extent that they have started to remove brand pages apart from a few “pilot profiles”. But is this a sensible approach?

There can be no doubt that, in the long term, brands will be crucial to the future success of Google+. Especially for the average user, the key reason to add Google+ to their repertoire of online spaces will be whether there is enough interesting and relevant content to keep them interested. While some of us might find the early-mover tech and marketing chat interesting, people in the real world are more interested in relevant, useful content which, for the most part is produced (or at least facilitated) by brands.

But brands will only go where their potential audience is so an emphasis on making Google+ a viable online space for people, before introducing brands, might be a smart move. There’s no doubt that some of the innovation Google+ has introduced, for instance Circles, have the potential to make the platform a better environment for discretely sharing content amongst specific groups of people than either Twitter or Facebook currently provide and this might be one key to growing user engagement.

However, it’s a bit of a chicken and egg question. Brands will only go where there is a critical mass of potential customers and those customers will only use a platform where there is sufficient entertaining, interesting or useful content, mostly provided by their favourite brands. However, in the short term, a focus on getting the consumer proposition and interaction right feels like a good move.

Certainly, Google have deep enough pockets to wait before they introduce money-making opportunities for brands, and themselves. The integration of social behaviour and search data has been a holy grail for some time now and I wouldn’t bet against Google making this happen with this new platform. Whatever happens next, we can be sure that Google will have their eye on the ease with which they can monetise the site in the longer term.

Source: TheDrum

How to Edit Your Google+ Account Settings « Google+ Insider's Guide

If you've gained entry into Google+, one of the first things you should do is adjust your Google account settings. Your settings will now look quite different, and you can adjust your notifications, password retrieval methods, and more. There are many settings that you may not have been aware of before.
Step 1 Go to Your Google+ Account Settings

You can access your settings at https://plus.google.com/settings/. Here, you can change your password, recovery options, and make your account even more secure.
Step 2 Improve Your Security Settings

Let's go through each section. You can click on the Edit profile link to edit your Google+ profile. Note that after July 31, 2011, all Google+ profiles will be public, and a name will be the only required information. If you don't fill it out, it will be deleted.

In the Security section, you can change your password, as well as change recovery options.



If you click on Change password, you'll be taken to a new page, where you'll be asked to confirm your current password or provide the answer to a security question. Here, you can enter and confirm a new password, and Google will also evaluate the password strength.



You can enable multiple sign-in. If you have more than one Google account (and face it, many of us do), you can sign in and use switch between both accounts in the same browser. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. If you enable it, not all of your Google products will work with multiple sign-in, and you'll have to switch between the accounts you want to use via the drop-down menu up at the top right.



Next, you can review and change which applications and sites are connected to your Google account. By clicking on Revoke Access, you remove the site's permission to access the specified Google product, like your Google Contacts or Google Books.

Application-specific passwords are only enabled if you decided to to sign up for 2-step verification (see below). You can create passwords for applications within Google products, but note that this may not work on some mobile or desktop applications.



Set up 2-step verification to further secure your Google account. If you're the type of person to use "password" as an actual password, this introduces another layer of security. It generates a code that is sent to your phone, which you use to authenticate your Google account about once a month.





In the Email addresses and usernames section, you can edit your personal information, and add other alternate email addresses, in case you want to use others to recover your password or use them to sign into your primary Google account.



In the Services section, you can delete your Google+ account, or your Google account entirely. If you click on Delete profile and remove associated social features, you'll be taken to a new page, where you'll be asked whether you want to delete all your Google+ content, or delete your entire Google profile. If you delete your Google profile, other services that may depend on that data can also potentially be eliminated.



If you want to close out your entire Google account, you'll have to confirm for each individual product in which you want the data deleted, and confirm also that you are responsible for any pending financial transactions. And if you are going to take this drastic step, I recommend you back up your data before you leave.


Step 3 Control Your Profile and Privacy Settings

If privacy is important to you, then pay attention to this section. Here, you can control how others see you.

In the Google Profiles section, you can control the visibility of most of your information on your profile. You can edit the visibility on your profile, or check out how others see your profile by entering a user name.



The Sharing section links directly to the settings on Google+, and it explains who can see you, who can see your posts, share posts, and control which people show up in your profile. Circle names are private and cannot be revealed.



You can change your Google+ settings for Photos to specify who can tag you, add a location to your photos, etc. You can also add interests to Sparks, which are only visible to you. When you start a hangout, you'll be prompted to check your microphone and speakers, and check your appearance.



In the Google Privacy section, you can sign into your Dashboard, which lets you manage the settings for all of your Google account products. Google's Privacy Center is also linked, which takes you to a page that explains how Google's privacy policies work for all its products and services.


Step 4 Set Up Notification Settings for Google+

If you've decided to enable Google+ for your mobile phone, this is the first thing you should edit after installing it. Otherwise, you'll get a notification for every little thing that happens in Google+. Decide what you want to get notifications of, and how you want to receive them—whether through email, through your phone, or both.





In the Google +1 section, you can enable +1 personalization on non-Google sites. Just click on the Edit link, and you'll be given the option of enabling or disabling +1 personalization. If you enable personalization, you may receive more targeted advertising based on the things you +1, but that information is not shared with the sites you view.



You can decide who can start a huddle with you. Since the huddle feature is only available on your phone, I'd recommend that you change it from "anyone" to either "circles" or "extended circles". By default, it's set to "anyone", which means that any random stranger can try to start a conversation with you on your phone. Not exactly practical.



In the Photos section, you can opt whether or not to automatically display geo location information on your photos and photo albums. You can also indicate which people can tag you and link to your profile, and you can do this by individual or by circle.


Step 5 Set Up Default Language(s)

The default language is set to English, but if you want to view Google products in your native tongue, just click on Add another language.


Step 6 Download Your Data

The data liberation section lets you download most of the stuff you've uploaded to Google+ in handy zip files. Or you could be more direct and just download them all in one go.


Step 7 Connect Other Social Accounts to Your Google Account

Are you on Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn or other social media accounts? It might be practical for you to link them to your Google account. Doing so will personalize your searches further, and you can choose whether to display them on your public Google profile.



It's a good idea to check in with your Google account settings every so often. Google often refines the account settings, so there may be new options to keep your account as secure and as private as you like it.

Source: Discovercircles


Facebook is opening its vistas wider for corporate marketers, leveraging its 700-million user base as the social networking giant is locked in a game of one-upmanship with Google following the launch of Google+.

Facebook's latest move comes after rival Google earned the wrath of corporates by deleting accounts created by companies on Google+, its newest social networking service. The overnight deletion of company accounts as well as individual accounts held in pseudonyms apparently affected the rate at which the user base grew for Google+ service. According to Web analytics firm Experian Hitwise's data, 1.79 million total visits were logged by Google+ in the week ending July 23, which was a three percent fall from the previous week's figures.

Google has maintained that the social networking feature is on a beta version and an invitation mode, and that pseudonyms cannot be used for names. Google disappointed corporates by stopping their brand building efforts on Google+. It advises companies to wait until the full version rolls out.

It is in this context that the Facebook initiative gains importance. The Facebook for Business Web site promises to help businesses create a space to interact with potential customers and build a community. It says businesses can reach exactly the people they want with ads that let them target by age, location and interests.

There is also a feature called sponsored stories, a way to way to amplify word of mouth. They can also transform the Web site into a social experience with plug-ins and custom apps.

"Business owners can learn best practices for creating a Page and engaging customers in a two-way conversation to answer questions, get valuable feedback, and to reach their friends," a Facebook spokesperson said in an email, according to Information Week.

"Businesses can learn how to find new customers before they search for them using Facebook's targeted Ads, and bring customers from the Web into their stores. And we want to inspire small businesses by seeing how other businesses have found success on Facebook by sharing their stories."

The new site offers a step-by-step online guide to aid small and medium enterprises leverage on the marketing and brand building potential of the social networking giant. The site gives directions on, among other things, how to set up a profile page, create targeted ads and deals, and interact with customer feedback online.

Source: Ibtimes

Google+ Identity Crisis: What’s at Stake With Real Names and Privacy





After a steady stream of angry blog posts and heated debate among its own users over the value of pseudonymity on the web, Google announced Monday that it was revising its “real name” policy, at least for display, on Google+.

In a post on Google+, Google VP Bradley Horowitz promised greater transparency, particularly in suspension of user profiles. The new algorithm — human as well as computational — offers users a chance to correct their profiles before suspension. In the past week, most banned profiles simply disappeared without warning.

The great Google+ profile purge began last week with business and media company profiles: ABC News Radio, Sesame Street, Wired. This wasn’t a surprise: Google had stated that it wanted to limit the social network to individuals until it could set up special pages for businesses.

But after Google was accused of using its policy to play favorites — why was Boing Boing banned and Mashable spared? — nearly every company was kicked off.

Then the ban hammer came down on any and all profiles whose listed first and last names didn’t appear to match “real”/legal names: nicknames, mononym handles, even non-Roman names in Arabic or Chinese. If an account was flagged by another user as “fake” or “spam,” Google’s overwhelmed community monitors were overwhelmingly likely to suspend it.

Even before the great purge, Google+ users and bloggers were grappling with the social network’s “real names only” policy. It was always vaguely defined: not necessarily your full legal name, but “the name people usually call you in real life.” GeekFeminism blogger Skud (whose account under that name was eventually suspended from Google+) started a wiki list titled “Who is harmed by a ‘Real Names’ policy?“: The list included marginalized and disadvantaged groups, artists and writers who use alternate names in different contexts, and political activists and whistleblowers. Hack Education’s Audrey Watters wrote defending college and graduate students’ need for pseudonymity on the web, citing concerns about employment and reputation. Google’s Horowitz addresses some of these concerns directly in his post, under the heading of “myths” about Google+.

Many users were happy that Google was keeping unknown users off the web, arguing that it kept the quality of user interactions high, keeping Google+ relatively free from comment trolls, spammers or phishers. But others questioned Google’s motives, arguing that they simply did not want to furnish more of their personal information to Google than seemed absolutely necessary to use the service.

Why does Google+ want users’ real names? Dave Winer takes a realist view:


There’s a very simple business reason why Google cares if they have your real name. It means it’s possible to cross-relate your account with your buying behavior with their partners, who might be banks, retailers, supermarkets, hospitals, airlines. To connect with your use of cell phones that might be running their mobile operating system. To provide identity in a commerce-ready way. And to give them information about what you do on the Internet, without obfuscation of pseudonyms.

Simply put, a real name is worth more than a fake one.

This is why I’ve argued that Google+ is not only a social network: Social media here is a means to establishing identity. This is a tightly-related — but not an identical — business.

Google’s response aims to try to make social identification nearly as nuanced and granular as its approach to sharing content has been. Users can already add nicknames to their profile, as well as “other names”; according to Horowitz, these (along with your education, employment and occupation) will soon be searchable and appear in your G+ “hovercard” identifying you across all of Google — at least for those circles you choose to grant access to them.

This is similar to the company’s earlier decision to change gender — a mandated field that was intended in part to keep corporate profiles out of G+ — a private or public field, at individual users’ discretion. There’s no word yet that users will likewise be able to hide their full/”real” names, or display them only to selected circles. But that may be coming as well.

Let’s be clear, though: All of these changes affect only the public display of identity to other users and the open web. Google itself still wants your full identity, or at least as much identity information as possible. Other users may only get partial glimpses at your multiple and overlapping identities, as well as the information you share. Google gets everything.

Let’s contrast Google’s approach to identity with Facebook’s. Last year, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg drew ample criticism for his stance on identity and privacy.

The Zuckerberg identity-privacy quote that became famous was given to David Kirkpatrick for his bookThe Facebook Effect (emphasis added):


You have one identity… The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly…Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.

The second part of Zuckerberg’s defense of a unified identity isn’t mentioned as often, but it’s maybe only becoming fully illustrated now. He specifically contrasts Facebook’s approach to Google’s:


Let me paint the two scenarios for you. They correspond to two companies in the Valley. … On the one hand you have Google, which primarily gets information by tracking stuff that’s going on. They call it crawling. They crawl the web and get information and bring it into their systems. They want to build maps, so they send around vans which literally go and take pictures of your home for their Street View system. … Google is a great company, but you can see that taken to a logical extreme that’s a little scary.

On the other hand, we started the company saying there should be another way. If you allow people to share what they want and give them good tools to control what they’re sharing, you can get even more information shared. But think of all the things you share on Facebook that you wouldn’t want to share with everyone, right? You wouldn’t want these things to be crawled or indexed—like pictures from family vacations, your phone number, anything that happens on an intranet inside a company, or any kind of private message or e-mail.

This is one reason Fred Vogelstein wondered whether Facebook’s “(un)privacy revolution” might actually be a good thing for the web: Allowing users to share more of their information without worry of having it crawled and indexed by Google’s servers.

Google, on the other hand, has created a social network that allows you to offer multiple identities to others, while keeping all of that information, which was previously inaccessible to its identity engine, to itself. Under the banner of increased privacy and user control, it solicits information from you that, were it viewable by everyone in your networks, you would most likely keep to yourself.

Well, now we’ve given you almost everything, Google. Please don’t be evil.

Source: Wired

Google+ Chrome Extensions: 5 More Handy Tools


1. Replies and More for Google+: Improve Reply and Share Options, Add a Mute Shortcut



"Replies and More" offers a mixed bag of functionality, but it comes recommended with a five-star rating.

As well as adding a notification number to the G+ favicon and keeping the header bar at the top of the page, it brings extra functionality to posts.

Instead of the the "Reply" option, you get "Reply to Author" which automatically adds the +name to your response. This also works if you reply to comments on posts. It also creates a drop down box for the share option, giving you the ability to email, tweet or post to your Facebook wall.

Finally, hitting "m" when you've got a post selected mutes it. Try it -- it's quite satisfying simply "M-ing" those noisy Plussers in your stream!

2. +Photo Zoom: Enlarge Images By Hovering Over Them


This wizzy extension gives you a quick way to enlarge images in your Google+ stream. With a standard install, it will show a larger version of photos when you hover your cursor over them.

You can also change the settings so that a photo will only enlarge if you hover over it for a certain amount of time, or if you press a function key. We'd definitely recommend taking advantage of the customizable settings. The instant no-holds-barred hover can get tiresome when browsing, but is a useful tool when used with discretion.

3. Usability Boost for Google Plus: Change Google+'s Look, Add a Mute Button


This is a good option if you're finding your stream hard on the eye. It changes the appearance of the site by adding a grey background boxes to the posts to make them look more separated. It comes down to personal preference, but you may prefer this developer's version to Google's original design.

Other tricks include a "mute" option at the top of every post (which saves you from selecting mute from the drop down menu) and a fixed menu bar at the top of your display.

4. GPlus+ Search: Search Google+ Public Content


This handy little tool adds an icon to your Chrome toolbar that offers a quick and easy way to search public Google+ content.

Google+'s current search tool is geared to finding users, rather than content, although we do expect that to change in the future.

Once installed you simply click on the icon to search the social networking service for keywords. Search options include "all", "posts" and "profile" as well as other related Google products like Buzz and Reader.

5. Beautify G+: Fix the Left and Right Hand Menus, Remove Some Promo Elements


This extension fixes the left and/or right menus in place, so if you get lost scrolling down your stream you don't have to head all the way back up to the top of the page to navigate to a different area.

In addition, it can hide the automatically generated "Suggestions" that show up on the left of your screen and get rid of the "Go mobile" promo link.
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Source: Mashable

Tips Tricks Google+ Plus


Inevitably we have to accept the name of change, yesterday we provided facilities for social media such as Friendster that evolved into a social media communications media that could chat all at once, so that Facebook may already be very familiar to our ears. And with it we also get more other social media that allow us to follow / follow people who we think are our idols, where we can obtain information from people that we follow.

But time is run, the change becomes the only constant in the face of the earth. Now a giant company in the field of Search Engine create the GOOGLE PLUS, which simply, I say to the media is the mathematical sum from friendster + facebook + twitter + yahoo massenger = Google Plus.

Google+ can be accessed from http://google.com/ or http://plus.google.com or http://google.com/plus, hp / mobile devices, can access google through http://m plus. google.com / plus.

For sharing post / status from Google+ click the “Time” link and use the Google Shortener Extension if you use the default browser Google Chrome which we can even directly post the text to Blogger, Tumblr, Facebook and others. (Except if the policy has been shut down this facility up again).

Creative ways to manage the Rings / Circles
Create a circle in the “Inbox” which contains a contact / friend that we will see all posts / their status. There are already several default circles which provide google like the friends (friends), family (families), and acquaintances (acquaintances).
Prepare an empty circle (give your own name for example: “Read later”) that indeed we are prepared for enter our friend into the circle, when needed.
Good enough, if we prepare an empty circle, which we named “Drafts”. Who knows suddenly we find the idea to post the status that we do not want to read others, well that’s where we keep all our draft status of posts that not yet share / for our friends. Whenever we want then we can directly copy and paste into a new status, or can be directly shared directly from there.
In fact, we can also create an empty circle named “Bookmarks” that we can take and post many times, where we need to split / share.
Sometimes we do not expect to read posts that are too ugly or bad in our streams. How: open notification / notifications, then locate the bad status click the small button bottom right of the status, there is the option “mute” hide.

Writting Status Format / Post
Google allow users to print bold, italic, and strikethrough on our posts, as follows:

_italic text_ : italic text
* bold text * : bold text
- strikethrough text - : strikethrough text
_*italic bold text*_ : italic bold text


Source: Tech Zone

Google+ vs. Facebook


Technobombs.com has created an infographic showing, in a glance, all the fundamental differences between the two social networks: 
Source





If you're looking for a deeper dive on how the two social networks compare, be sure to read the hands-on with Facebook's video chat and hands-on with Google+. Also check out PCMag's take on Google+ privacy terms. 

Google+ reached 10m users in 16 days. Want to know how long it took Facebook and Twitter ?


Google+ took a mere 16 days to hit 10 million users. By comparison, both Twitter and Facebook took over 2 years to hit that milestone, requiring 780 days and 852 days respectively.

Leon HÃ¥land has kindly put together this graph, which which helps put Google+’s hockey-stick growth into perspective, compared to its social networking counterparts:
Whilst there’s little doubt that Google+’s growth is impressive, it’s probably also worth noting that it did have a considerable head-start on both Twitter and Facebook, which were both starting from scratch – as a social network, as a brand…as everything.
Google, on the other hand, has thirteen years’ growth behind it and is one of the most recognizable digital brands in the world. It already had a mammoth user-base across its plethora of products, so it’s perhaps not all that surprising that it could notch up 10m users in around a fortnight.
Google+ is thought to have reached the 10 million users mark around the 13th of July, and it had doubled-up again by about a week later. That’s 20 million users in three weeks.
Google’s latest attempt at creating a social network seems to be paying off, and it has so far received pretty favorable reviews. The Next Web carried out a quicksurvey of our readers in early July, and we found that two-thirds of users preferred Google+ to Facebook, with less than half saying they preferred it to Twitter. The latter was perhaps an unfair comparison, given that Twitter is a different social beast to Google+.
But what about LinkedIn? We wrote earlier this month that Google+ may actually be a bigger threat to LinkedIn than it is to Facebook or Twitter. For the record, LinkedIn was launched in May 2003, and it didn’t hit the 10m members mark until April 2007. It now has over 100m members.
Interesting statistics. It’s still early doors for Google+ – will it continue on its upwards trajectory, or will it begin to plateau once the hype subsides? Only time will tell.
Source: TheNextWeb

Google+ Desktop Client


It’s been three weeks since Google launched their social networking solution and they have already raked in about 18 million users. If you are among these users and search for an application that takes Google+ out of the web browser and straight on the desktop, GClient could be what you’re looking for.

GClient is free to use for non-commercial purposes and actually offers you the mobile version of the Google service. The consequence of this is that some features, like Hangouts, are trimmed off.

Installing the application should not take too long to complete, if your system is already equipped with .NET Framework 4.0. Actually, most of the process is dedicated to downloading and installing the software framework.

In order to start using GClient you will have to punch in a code from the developer, which is obtained in exchange to your email address and name. Once you have the app unlocked, you can punch in your Google credentials and log into Google+ service.

The interface is nothing fancy, but it is nothing short of functional, as it encompasses almost all the features present in the browser version. If everything seems crammed up in a small interface, the app lets you switch to the browser version with a click of a button (scroll down to choose “Desktop” version).

All the basic functions available in the full service are present in GClient as well. Checking your stream is unavoidable, since the application will open this view each time you pop it out the system tray area. This is a bit of a downer as one would expect to view the screen you left off the last time.

You can easily navigate through the main section of the service and check messages from connections that aren’t in your circles. The same default circles are present in this version, namely Acquaintances, Family, Following and Friends, and you can increase their number at any time.

The “Home” panel gets you access to the four areas governing your Google+ page in the browser: Stream, Photos, Profile and Circles. Checking the messages and comments of one of your connections (if they’re shared with you or publicly) can be done by simply clicking on their name. Also, getting into the conversation takes no more than a click of a button.

Posting a message is an easy task, but has its shortcomings. In our case we found it pretty difficult to navigate through the message as we typed it. The usual shortcuts for skipping entire words to the desired location did not work and we could only move to the beginning of the row or the end of it.

However, in our case the trouble with the application was deeper. At one point we were unable to launch it as it would present us an error message before we even reached the login panel. Our endeavors to make the app work, which included restarting the system, were futile. Reinstalling the application did not help much, either. As such, a full test of the application could not be performed.

Just like in the full version accessible through your browser, you can share your messages with specific circles only, or you can pick an email address to direct the text to a certain recipient.

Even if it may look crammed up, reaching the functions embedded in the interface is an effortless task. If you are not familiar with the mobile view of the service GClient may take some time to adjust to, especially since the frame is bound to the system tray area and does not give you the possibility to place it in a different position on the desktop.

Also, the fact that it changes back to Stream view every time it pops up is not too helpful. This may be particularly frustrating if it happens to click outside the interface while typing a message. We haven’t tested this because the app would not show up, but the result might be that you have to punch in the letters again.

The Good

Most of the good stuff present in the desktop version of the service has been pinned in this interface as well. The central areas (Stream, Circles and posting) are well defined and easy to reach.

Stream section shows the links and photos (we do not know how video content is displayed) are shown in GClient’s frame.

The Bad

The major drawback in our case was that the product refused to work after playing with it for a while and restarting the system. Reinstalling it failed to bring up the interface and continued to show an error message.

Each time you pop up GClient’s frame it’ll show you the Stream section. We experienced some trouble moving through text when typing the messages. Some functions of the desktop version have been eliminated.

The Truth

From our experience with the product GClient does not seem to be in the final stage of development. It is a good alternative to the browser version of the service but besides the fact that it lacks several features, it also lacks stability.


Source: Softpedia









The Beginning Of The End Of Facebook ?


Since the launch of Google Plus, the blogosphere has been making negative comments about the future of Facebook. Some say the giant’s social media product means a 
game over for Facebook.
Google Plus’ visit is increasing tremendously. Although Facebook still have ten times of its 1.8 million visits in last week, the growth of Google Plus became a real threat for them.
Here are some data about the growth of Google Plus from Experian Hitwise:
  • Google Plus (plus.google.com) ranked as the number 42 most visited social networking site in the U.S. for the week ending July 16, 2011.
  • Google Plus ranked as the 638th most visited site among all sites in the U.S. last week (July 16th), up from its previous ranking as the 2404th most visited site in the U.S. the previous week (July 9th).
  • Google Plus received more than 1.8 million total visits last week ending July 16, 2011. That is an increase of 283 percent versus the previous week and an increase of 821 percent versus the week ending July 2nd.
  • 56 percent of upstream traffic to Google Plus  last week came from other Google properties. Google.com accounted for 34 percent of upstream traffic to the site.
  • 37 percent of upstream traffic to Google Plus last week came from search engines. Email provided the second largest amount of upstream traffic accounting for 21 percent.
  • 57 percent of visits to Google Plus are from males (based on four weeks ending July 16th)
  • 38.37 percent of visits are from users age 25-34 for the four weeks ending July 16th, the previous week users ages 18 to 34 made up the majority of visits with 38.11 percent.
  • Most visits overall to Google Plus were coming from the greater metropolitan area of Los Angeles followed by New York City, San Francisco for the four weeks ending July 16th.
  • Visitors from the metropolitan regions of Bowling Green, KY, Portland, OR and Bend, OR were most likely to visit Google Plus than the online population last week.
What does the data imply?  The beginning of the end of Facebook?

Source: Ideaverse


Google+ growth stalls to 18 million members?

The viral growth of Google's upcoming social network Google+ appeared to slow down in the past few days even as its user base was expected to reach 18 million by Wednesday (Manila time).

But statistician and genealogy site Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen said growth for Google+ will likely zoom up again once Google starts promoting it.

"The viral growth of Google+ has slowed somewhat over the past few days, but my new-and-improved 1,000 surname model shows that more than 750,000 people joined the site on Monday, bringing the total user base to just under 18 million," he said in a Google+ post.

From a peak of two million signing up in a single day earlier this month, he said that growth had slowed in the last four days.

During the last four days, growth dipped to a low of 4.47 percent since Google started allowing users into Google+ last July 6.

Had the two-million-a-day signups continued, Allen said Google+ would have reached 20 million users by last Sunday night.

On the other hand, Allen said Google has yet to market Google+. Google products are used by more than a billion people, he noted.

Should it start doing so, he said millions can be expected to join Google+ a day.

"(Google) Chairman Eric Schmidt says the vision is to integrate Circles and sharing with all the other Google properties. When that happens, you will likely see millions of people joining Google+ every day for some period of time," he said.

Meanwhile, Allen hinted he is considering tracking the following trends over time:

  • Percentage of active Facebook users who say Facebook is their favorite social network
  • Percentage of active Facebook users who have heard of Google+ and who have tried it
  • Percentage of active Google+ users who say Google+ is their favorite social network
  • Percentage of active Twitter users who say Twitter is their favorite social network
  • Average number of people in circles
  • Average number of public posts per user per day
  • Male/Female ratio

A separate article on Mashable noted Allen had estimated Google+ hitting the 10-million-user mark July 12 or 13, days before Google CEO Larry Page confirmed the 10-million mark.

Mashable also noted Google+'s most followed user, Mark Zuckerberg, now has more than 250,000 followers, "despite not posting a single public item on his Google+ account." — TJD, GMA News

Google+ for iPhone app released


The Google+ for iOS app has been released [iTunes link], offering iPhone (but not iPod touch) users a native way to access the new Google social network. As with the Google+ Android app, which Google released at the service’s launch, the iOS version supports Huddle group chats along with access to the full Stream of updates and individual Circle updates.
Prior to this app, iPhone and iPad owners have been forced to use an HTML5 version that Google offers online. Although it allows for basic Google+ access, it lacked the Huddle IM system and other components.
We’re yet to see a native Honeycomb app for Android tablets, nor a native iPad version of the software, though we’d be surprised if Google’s engineers weren’t working on both. Google+ has been prompting controversy among social networking heavyweights, with MySpace founder Tom Anderson coming out in support of the service, while LinkedIn’s CEO suggested Google+ would struggle to gain traction.
Source: slashgear.com

Google+: The Complete Guide

Google+: The Complete Guide

Google+: It’s the hot social network on the block. In just three weeks, Google’s competitor to Facebook and Twitter has amassed more than10 million users, and its users are sharing more than 1 billion pieces of content daily. It’s become a hotbed for early adopters, tech luminaries, marketers and businesses around the world.
Google+ isn’t the easiest thing to understand, though. It has a lot of features that can confuse beginners. Even advanced users can miss a lot of the little gems and nuances that define Google+.
That’s why we decided to dig into every aspect of Google+, from Hangouts to Circles, from Google+ for businesses to what’s next for Google’s social network. The result is an extensive guide on all of Google+’s key features, as well as an introduction to the service and the important things you need to know about it. We’ve included commentary, videos, photos and more in our in-depth guide. In addition, we will update this guide regularly with the newest information on Google’s Facebook competitor.
So, without further ado, here is Mashable‘s complete guide to Google+:

What Is Google+?

Google+ is the search giant’s latest attempt to create a social network that rivals Facebook. Google launched Google+ on June 28, 2011 with a private beta. The project was led by Vic Gundotra, Google’s SVP of social.

The social network is a collection of different social products. These features include Stream (a newsfeed), Sparks (a recommendation engine), Hangouts (a video chat service), Huddle (a group texting service), Circles (a friend management service) and Photos. We explain all of these features later in this guide. More features such as Games and Questions are expected to launch in the near future.
Google chose the name Google+ because it wants Google+ to be “an extension of Google itself,” Gundotra explained to Mashable days before the launch. It’s designed to be an improvement to all of Google, which is why the company also decided to change the iconic Google navigation bar to include a link to a user’s Google+ profile, as well as a new icon that displays how many notifications a user has received, much like how Facebook handles notifications.
This isn’t Google’s first shot at dominating the social space. It has a long history in social media, including Orkut and its biggest success in social, YouTube. However, it’s had two very big flops in social: Google Waveand Google Buzz.

Screenshots: What Google+ Looks Like

This gallery will provide you with a quick overview of what Google+ looks like. Keep reading this guide to learn more about how to use all of Google+’s features.
 
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