Google+ adds restricted communities for private conversations between businesses & schools

Google today announced an interesting new feature for businesses and schools that want to take advantage of Google+ to have private group conversations within their organization. Starting today, Google is making it possible to allow restricted communities on Google+ that restrict posts to just members of a company or only those that are invited:

You can decide if your restricted community will be open to everyone at your company or private, joinable by invitation only. While administrators can set restricted communities as the default for your organization, you can always choose to create communities open to people outside of your domain, so clients, agencies or business partners can join in the discussion.

Once a community is created, you’ll be able to share files from Google Drive as well as videos, events and photos. Community owners can easily change settings, manage membership or invite other team members to join and jump into the conversation.

You can learn more about creating restricted Google+ communities here.

Google also announced today that Google Groups will now automatically update as people leave and join groups.