Google+ Gets Major Upgrades
December 19, 2011
By Monica Gleberman, Contributing Writer
Google (News - Alert) has just announced a number of new features and improvements for Google+, its social network, which will be implemented over the next couple of days. Google made the announcement on its blog stating: “Today we are pleased to announce a goodie basket full of Google+ features and functionality for you to unpack and enjoy over the holidays.”
Google said it made these improvements with the consumer’s requests in mind. “Some of these were on nearly everyone’s wish list…and some we hope will be welcome surprises.”
Robin Wauter, writer for Tech Crunch, said there have been some creative updates. “The most interesting change is new controls that let users optimize the way they get their updates from circles and friends in their update streams,” said Wauters.
Wauters explained that now, Google offers a slider at the top of the page when you view a stream for a particular circle, which basically enables you to adjust how those posts should appear in the main stream.
Stan Schroeder, writer for Mashable, said he liked the same feature as Wauter called “Volume Control,” and explained it in more detail. “One of the new features called the ‘Volume Control,’ but it doesn’t have anything to do with sound volume. Instead, it is a slider that lets you find tune your streams and decide whether you want more or less items from a particular circle in your main stream,” said Schroeder.
Google also redesigned its notifications in its Google Bar, which appear as red icons on the right side of the bar. If you click on the red box, you will see snippers that make it easy to see what’s happening on your Google+ profile, including all of the bookmarks you have recently shared and/or received.
Google Pages also got updated and now enables businesses to assign up to 50 administrators. These administrators also get to take advantage of a new notification flow that makes it easier for said admins to manage pages.
Charlie Osborne, writer for ZDNET, said Google+ Photos component has also been tweaked. “The component isn’t necessarily the most user-friendly aspect of the Google+ package. Google have now decided to better integrate Lightbox, one of the most popular slideshow scripts currently available, to instigate better usability and comment legibility,” said Osborne.
Osborne said another feature coming down the road is picture tagging. Google will soon offer tagging allowing friends and families to be notified when they are in a picture, similar to that of Facebook.
Google said this year the team was been working hard and hope the users take advantage of the upgrades. “We hope that you enjoy these improvements and continue to provide us feedback. It’s been an incredible year for the Google+ team.”
Edited by Carrie Schmelkin