Google Plus Sports Some Cool Features
Source: Thomas Petty
Last week I introduced Google+ (or is it Google Plus?) as the new not-quite-ready-for-prime-time social media platform that's going head-to-head against Facebook's 600 million users.
It definitely has a much cleaner interface, and some pretty cool features that makes Facebook look just a bit stale. Is it the new killer app that we'll all jump on? Time will tell. The biggest hole is of course, that Google+ doesn't have any business functionality (yet), which will supposedly be available in a few months.
In the meantime, if you've gotten an invitation to join the platform, these are some of the cool features that you can test out for yourself. If you don't have any friends who are willing or able to invite you, you'll have to be content to play with the Google Plus demo platform.
Google+ circles simplify permissions
I really like the Google+ circles. With all the connections I have on various social media platforms, I don't necessarily want to share everything with everyone. When you edit your Google+ profile, you can click on any of the sections and choose who can see that part: everyone, extended circles, just your circles, or custom. It's so much more intuitive to set the permissions than on Facebook.
Once you have your circles' permissions set up, it's easy to put people in the right place. For people who connect to me that I don't know, they go in the "People I Don't Know" circle. They have limited permissions to my profile. People in the "Friends" circle have access to all my data, because I trust them.
Finally, the best thing about circles, is that I can click on it in the main feed to just see the updates from people in each circle. If I only want to see my friends' updates, I just click the "Friends" circle. Simple and elegant.
Lesser-known cool Google+ features
In Facebook, you can type an "@" symbol to tag someone in a post. Same thing in Google Plus, but it brings up names outside your circles as you type. Have you ever tried to tag a friend of a friend that's not your friend on Facebook? It doesn't work.
Status updates can go even further though. Using some simple punctuation before and after one or more words can give some emphasis to your comments. For instance:
*This is bold text*
_This is italicized text_
-This is strikeout text-
Are you on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube? No problem. Automatically connect your other social media accounts to your Google Plus account by going into the Google+ Settings and select "Connected Accounts". Add them all in, and you're done. This displays them on your public profile so others can connect to you there.
If you like using the video chat feature, Google+ supports HD video chat too. You need an HD video camera of course, and should have a good quality network connection. Click on the upside-down arrow next to the "Chat" option on the left. Choose "Settings", then you can enable HD video chatting. Very nice.
If you have multiple Google ids, like I do, it's an annoyance to log out of one account just to get into Google+. Then log out of that account to get back to Gmail or something else.
Fortunately, Google thought of this. You can enable multiple ids by going into Google+ Settings, choose "Account Overview" then enable "Multiple Sign-In". This allows you to switch easily between accounts, rather than logging in and out.
As Google+ matures and more people get onto the system, I think it's going to give Facebook a run for its money.
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