Google+ Photos has replaced Picasa in Google’s navigation bar

Jake Smith

What once used to send you to Picasa Web Albums, the “photos” link on Google’s navigation bar now sends you to Google+’s Photo service — Google Operating System discovered. Google+’s Photo service displays photos from your circles, from your Android phone, photo’s you’ve been tagged in, and your list of Picasa Web albums. Google+ Photos is still missing some editing features, album descriptions, and the ability to edit prints.

Don’t get this confused however, as Picasa is still available by manually typing in the URL. But, this seems for the best, right?

Despite humongous growth weeks ago, Google Plus traffic drops 60% reports analyst

Jake Smith

A few weeks ago a report surfaced that Google Plus saw 1269% user growth, due to the social network opening up to the public and earning a nice spot on the Google homepage. Today, however, analytics firm Chitika is reporting that Google Plus’s traffic has dropped 60% — indicated by the graph above.

Are people not digging Google Plus?

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Black Eyed Peas hosting backstage hangout via Google+ Hangouts, tomorrow night

Jake Smith

Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am has announced on Google+ that his music group will be hosting a backstage hangout, well, via Google+ Hangouts. The Hangout will take place tomorrow at 6 PM EST, before the BEP’s concert in Central Park. Will.i.am posted:

lets have fun at the backstage hangout…we even have a hangout onstage as well…
i want to re-define backstage interaction with fans who can not make the show…i think this will be the very first online backstage onstage web cam session…
“i like doing things 1st”

Yeah guys, Fergie will probably be there too.

Google+ to “become Google”, Horowitz says in interview

Jake Smith

As noted by The Next Web, Google’s VP of Product Bradley Horowitz, told Wired in an interview that Google+ will soon be Google. “Be Google?”, you’re probably thinking. What he means is that Google+ will soon not be its own product, but rather tied into almost every service offered by Google. You may remember when Google+ was sort-of tied into YouTube, but Horowitz says it will go deeper than that.

“Until now, every single Google property acted like a separate company. Due to the way we grew, through various acquisitions and the fierce independence of each division within Google, each product sort of veered off in its own direction.

… But Google+ is Google itself. We’re extending it across all that we do—search, ads, Chrome, Android, Maps, YouTube—so that each of those services contributes to our understanding of who you are.”

Google+ will soon be tied into ads (which has already happened), Chrome, Android, Maps, and more. This will begin to make a definitive Google product, leaving Google+ no longer acting as a separate company. This should make it easier on the non-technical folk, unlike you or me.

Google Plus traffic skyrockets 1269%, reports analyst

Jake Smith

Analyst Experian Hitwise has published numbers saying Google Plus’s traffic has spiked 1269% this past week, since the service opened to everyone. Last week, Plus recieved 15 million visits rather than the on average 1 million.

The traffic spike was most likely helped out by Google’s blunt advertising for Plus. Experian Hitwise’s numbers don’t include mobile users (which probably isn’t much) or users from Google’s black bar. To compliment the amount of visitors Paul Allen has also been throwing out their that the social network is now up to 43 million users. (via ReadWriteWeb)

Google+ adds the ability to share Circles

Jordan Kahn

Today Google engineer Owen Prater announced in the video statement above it is now possible to share Circles on Google+. From your Circles page, you can now select to share one Circle with any other. A post will be made allowing others to easily view and join the circle you’ve shared.

Shared circles wont continue to update as you make changes, however, allowing you to keep future changes to a Circle you’ve shared private. Others won’t see what you’ve named the circle either. Try it out!

From the announcement:
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