Google Plus

Google+ Collections, a feature that lets like-minded Google+ users connect in forums organized by topic, today comes to iOS devices after first rolling out for Android and web users a few months back.

Users can create Collections for topics they’re interested in and follow Collections created by other users to keep track of posts related to their interests. Google shared a few examples of popular Collections including Homebrewing, Climbing Junkie Photos, Magical, Mystical Mountains and Marine Life. It also features select Collections on a webpage here for easy searching.

When you post a Collection, Google notes that you’ll be able to customize who sees it thanks to recent improvements to the feature on Android that also come to iOS today. It also recently added the ability to add taglines to Collections and search for them on mobile devices.

The Collections feature is available now in the updated Google+ iOS app with version 4.8.5.

Opinion: I’m a human that uses Google+ every day, and (maybe) you should too

Stephen Hall Aug 3 2015 - 10:04 am PT

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Google+ has largely been heralded as dead, and that isn’t for no reason. Most recently, Google has decided that it’s time to stop pretending like people want it, and has started decoupling its other services from the infamous social network wannabe. For those that just couldn’t stand the fact that Google was pushing them into something they didn’t want, I guess that’s great. Google is listening to feedback, and they’re acting on it. But for me, Google+ is an invaluable part of my daily routine. There is so much interesting commentary and conversation that happens there that I can’t imagine a day without it. I’ve made friends on Google+. I’ve had some of my most viral social media postings go viral on Google+. I’ve talked with Google employees personally on Google+. I have the ability to write about Google and its products in-depth partly because of Google+. And no, this isn’t satire.
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Hangouts now lets you customize who can contact you directly

Stephen Hall Jul 31 2015 - 2:17 pm PT

Hangouts, since the beginning, has separated incoming messages into two categories. Either the app detects that you probably know the person that’s contacting you (by way of you circling them, them having your email address, or otherwise) and lets them send you a message directly, or it puts incoming messages into an “Invitation” that you have to accept. How this works has never been customizable, but now Google is letting you customize these invitations to make them more or less strict.

Here’s the image that Jordanna Chord shared:

In the new options, you can choose to go with Google’s recommended system, or you can opt to customize three different categories of incoming messages yourself. If you’d like, you can require that only invitations can be sent — regardless of if the sender has your email/phone number or not. Or, if you’re more of a free spirit, you can conversely use this opportunity to open up your inbox to any and all messages and allow everyone to contact you directly. Personally, I like the way Google has things set up. But I also like options. Options are good.

These settings will be available across the Hangouts apps, and of course, those who are using the Hangouts app on the desk through Google+ or otherwise will be able to take advantage of them as well.

Google+ Photos being discontinued August 1st following standalone Photos service debut

Tom Maxwell Jul 20 2015 - 1:05 pm PT

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Au revoir, Google+ Photos. In a post to Google+, ironically enough, Google has (unsurprisingly) announced that starting on August 1st, it will be sunsetting its Google+ Photos app in favor of the recently launched Google Photos. First the Android version of the app will stop working, followed by the iOS and web apps shortly thereafter. The company says the move to axe Google+ Photos is being made in an “effort to ensure everyone has the best photos experience we can deliver.”

Knowledge Graph cards in search are no longer showing Google+ posts

Stephen Hall Jun 30 2015 - 9:18 pm PT

Despite things “going really well,” it looks like Google is backtracking on a decision it made long ago to include Google+ profile links in Knowledgr Graph cards for popular brands. A Google spokesperson talking to Search Engine Land has confirmed the change, saying that it’s intended to bring “more consistency.”

As you can see below, the section was labeled as “Recent posts on Google+”:

Notably, this minor change isn’t going to affect Google+ results showing up in regular searches. And while you won’t find a featured link to the Google+ profile of a company you search for, Google has been putting social links to most popular networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and others, in its Knowledge Graph cards since January.

The change started rolling out at some point last week.

Four years on, Chief Architect of Google+ says ‘this is going really well’

Stephen Hall Jun 29 2015 - 7:24 am PT

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Most pretty much universally agree at this point that Google+ didn’t work out the way the Mountain View company hoped it might. I would definitely agree with this narrative to some extent, but I — unlike most — wouldn’t go as far as to say that Google+ is dead. While it definitely doesn’t have the mainstream appeal of Twitter or Facebook by any stretch of the imagination, Google+ most often appeals to a very specific breed: those who are devout users of Google’s products…
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PSA: You can now tweak which apps & services show up in Google notifications

Stephen Hall Jun 23 2015 - 7:39 am PT

Google has lately been shuffling around its notification menu, most recently adding separate Google Photos notifications that tell you when the newly-launched “Assistant” has made a collage, video, or GIF from your library. But there might be some people who don’t want to see their Google Photos notifications (or perhaps more likely, those who don’t want to see their Google+ notifications), and Google has today launched an accommodation for those circumstances. There’s now a familiar gear icon in the notification drop-down that lets you access a new “Settings” page for toggling which notifications you want to receive…
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Google ditches the Google+ link on its many web properties, hides it in the app menu

Stephen Hall Jun 1 2015 - 9:31 am PT

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Cue the “Google+ is dead” jokes, and the following “was Google+ ever alive?” remarks.

Google has today removed the link to users’ Google+ profile from the top its many web properties, most notably its front search page and Gmail web app. Previously, names appeared with a plus in front like “+Stephen” and would link to your Google+ profile. From today, it looks like Google is making the name label no longer a link, and moving the “+Stephen” Google+ link to the app drop-down menu…
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Google I/O 2015 Preview: We’re doubling down on Android M, Chrome, Wear and more

Seth Weintraub May 26 2015 - 12:15 pm PT

Stephen and I are off to Google I/O 2015 this week (the first time we’ve sent 2 people – for double the coverage!) but we wanted to preview what we we’re excited about this week. I’d run through the list of expectations but Chance already made 90% of the list when the sessions were launched. Go check it out. Here’s what I’ve been hearing…
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Bloomberg: Google set to announce standalone photo service at I/O 2015

Stephen Hall May 19 2015 - 1:30 pm PT

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According to sources for Bloomberg, Google is set to announce an “an online picture sharing and storage service” separate of Google+. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking news, but it’s further confirmation of something we’ve been hearing about since as far back as August of last year.

Google Inc. is set to reveal an online picture sharing and storage service that will no longer be part of the Google+ social network, people familiar with the plans said.

Google has removed the Shared Circles feature from Google+

Tom Maxwell May 9 2015 - 1:09 pm PT

Google+ Collections is a neat new way to follow and share curated sets of Google+ posts based on your interests, and it started rolling out as recently as May 4th. Google perhaps believes Collections to be so neat, in fact, that when they axed the ability to share set groups of people and pages earlier this week, they did so with nary an announcement (via Google Plus Daily). That, or so few people actually used this “Shared Circles” feature that the announcement of its removal wasn’t really necessary.

Since Google never even mentioned this change, we can’t know the exact reason behind the feature’s removal. But the feature as of late was used mostly for spamming, with lots of posts on the network soliciting users to add a Circle and reshare, which resulted in little to no engagement from new followers and lots of junk content in your feed. Again, the Google+ Collections tool has a similar intended use, allowing you to see groups of related content — but, not necessarily users. It’s definitely worth checking out if you were someone who used Shared Circles.

Google+ Collections is now rolling out, new share button appearing for some users

Stephen Hall May 4 2015 - 8:36 am PT

Google+ Collections, a feature that has been widely rumored and speculated to be rolling out today, has started appearing on the Google+ web interface for some. Google has yet to officially announce the feature, but a new “Share” button has supposedly started appearing for some users that suggests that they “Use collections to group [their] posts.”
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Google’s Mr. Jingles dresses up to celebrate Earth Day

Stephen Hall Apr 22 2015 - 6:58 am PT

Apple may be making its leaves green, but Google is celebrating Earth Day too. They’ve of course changed the homepage logo into a Google Doodle, but Mr. Jingles—the Google+ notifications mascot—is also dressing up to celebrate.

As we told you yesterday, clicking today’s new Google Doodle will take you to an “Earth Day Quiz” that… tells you which animal you’re most like. It’s a “totally scientific and 1,000% accurate personality quiz,” Google says.

Latest update to Google+ for Android brings redesigned communities

Stephen Hall Apr 17 2015 - 8:27 am PT

The latest version of Google+ for Android—which started rolling out earlier today—gives G+ communities a pretty nifty new redesign. First shared on Google+ by Googler Danielle Buckley, the update makes the community screens a bit more unique with a UI that’s a notable change compared to the rest of the app. One of the annoyances of the Google+ app has long been that it can be hard to tell what you’re looking at because it’s so uniformly designed, and this update seems to make it a bit easier for you to instinctively know that you’re viewing a community.

Announcing: Improved look & feel for Communities

Check out your favorite community on Android to see the new and improved look in this week’s app update (currently rolling out). We hope you’ll love it!

Google+ isn’t the most popular social network, but it does have many loyal users—who, unsurprisingly, are commonly loyal fanboys of Google as a whole. I personally can attest to the fact that Google+ isn’t necessarily the ghost town that it’s claimed to be, though, as I’m the owner of the largest Android Wear community (with more than 40,000 members). It makes me glad to see that this community is now going to look just a bit better on mobile. This visual redesign can be found in version 5.3 of the Google+ app, which is rolling out on the Google Play Store today.

Google+ Stories now showing up as a Google Now card for some users

Stephen Hall Apr 3 2015 - 9:00 am PT

Google+ has long had an interesting feature called “Stories” that creates a fun timeline out of your uploaded photos, but now users are reporting that these are now showing up in Google Now. The card that’s appearing in some users’ feeds shows a photo preview of the story, an associated date, the number of moments—and tapping this card takes you to the Google+ app to view it in its full form or share it with your followers.

There are a lot of things you need to make sure are in order before you might see one of these cards, but it’s not all too complicated. The hardest part for most tech enthusiasts would probably be going out and taking enough photos for Google+ Stories to have something to work with. If you’ve never used Google+ Stories before, this is how you get started (according to Google’s support page):

Make a story

Stories are automatically created and you’ll be notified when one is made for you. Stories will work best if you:

Turn on Google Location History for Android or iOS

If you store photos on Google Drive, show your Drive photos & videos in your photo library

Use Auto Backup on your mobile device or computer

Make sure Auto Awesome is on

Add your home & work addresses in Google Maps

Take a lot of pictures

After you’ve done all of these things, it probably won’t be long before you see the above card in your Google Now feed. On the other hand, if you are receiving this card and you don’t want to or you simply have no interest in Google+ stories at all, Google says you can turn the feature off completely by disabling Auto Awesome.

(via Thomas Tenkely)

Google Drive now gives access to your photos as Google+ dismantling begins

Stephen Hall Mar 30 2015 - 12:33 pm PT

Sundar Pichai recently said in a Forbes interview that Google was going to start focusing on the core parts of Google+ (namely, Hangouts, photos, and the Google+ stream) as being three independent areas of interest. One of the first big steps towards this goal, positioning “Photos” as being its own standalone product accessible across Google services, has finally started happening today: You can now view your Google+ photos under a new “Google Photos” section in Google Drive…
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Amid turbulence, Google Plus loses its latest leader – Horowitz again takes over

Seth Weintraub Mar 1 2015 - 5:26 pm PT

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TechCrunch:

…confirmed with Google, that David Besbris [above] has left his role as the head of the company’s social and identity product. He has been replaced by Bradley Horowitz, a longtime VP of product for Google+.

Google Plus seems to be in tumult and it sounds like it is being dismantled for its good parts including Photos and Hangouts. Perhaps the feed will turn into a more Twitter-like product. Who knows at this point—we’ll likely get a roadmap at Google I/O in May.

As for new lead Bradley Horowitz, he never really left Google+ through Vic Gundotra’s departure and will probably oversee the split of the units which are said to have already been reduced by half.

Google+ mobile web interface gets a facelift in latest update

Stephen Hall Feb 26 2015 - 7:58 am PT

Google announced last night that the web interface for Google+ has received a facelift, bringing many visual cues from the company’s Material Design language. The new design sports a hamburger menu that slides in from the left side, a bright red toolbar at the top of pages, and a floating material-y circle in the bottom right that should look familiar to those using Google’s latest mobile operating system…

As per Danielle Buckley‘s Google+ page:

Today we’re excited to announce the new and improved Google+ experience for mobile web. We focused on making everything faster, more beautiful, and more intuitive. To check out all the new updates, visit plus.google.com on your phone or tablet’s browser. As always, we’d love to hear what you think!

This update brings the app up to 2015 standards, but there’s a still a lot of disparity between Google+ on different platforms. We have a newly redesigned web interface that is now closer in functionality to the Android app (but not quite the same), an iOS app that is unique in its own ways, and a desktop experience that is completely different than the mobile apps. Hopefully we’ll see a more unified experience over time.

Google acquires Odysee, team behind photo backup and sharing app joins Google+

Stephen Hall Feb 9 2015 - 6:51 am PT

An app called Odysee has been acquired by Google, and the “Platform Team” behind it will be joining the Google+ team. The app, while definitely not all too well known, let users automatically back up their photos and videos from their smartphones to the cloud as well as a home computer.

The team will continue to work on “building amazing products” at Google, but it’s not exactly clear yet what the team is going to be doing—or what parts of Odysee may or may not be making it into Google+. Auto-upload of photos to Google+ has been pushed in the company’s official app for quite some time now, so maybe the team is coming on board to flesh out and expand that functionality of the service…
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Google’s Mr. Jingles gets some holiday decorations for Christmas

Stephen Hall Dec 25 2014 - 7:20 am PT

It may or may not surprise you to find out that Google has a name for its little notification bell in Google+. Surprisingly, not only does Mr. Jingles have a name, but he has an official Google+ page dedicated just to him. And while Mr. Jingles spends most of the year in his normal bell-like state, he occasionally dresses up to share some holiday spirit on Google’s social network.

Here’s a look at some of Mr. Jingles’ previous costumes, spanning celebrations for fall, New Years Day, Valentine’s day, and Christmas 2013:

This year, Mr. Jingles wanted to make sure that Santa would be able to find him, so he dressed up with some Christmas lights:

To see Mr. Jingles, just open up your notifications pane in Google+ and click the button in the top right corner to clear all of them. You should see the above Christmas 2014 version of Mr. Jingles, Christmas tree lights and all.

Google+ gains automatic video quality, stability, and audio enhancement capability

Mike Beasley Dec 19 2014 - 7:07 pm PT

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjDd0rkHAuA]

Google has announced a new feature for its Google+ Auto Backup system that will automatically enhance the quality of videos taken on mobile devices. The feature works by analyzing videos that have been backed up to Google+, then present users with the option of applying color, stability, or audio quality fixes.

You can then view a before-and-after example of the changes, then choose whichever version you like best. An example is embedded above. These changes can also be applied to any older videos through the Google+ website. The company says that a speech enhancement option will be added in the future.

Google shuffles its notification interface around, puts most functionality in Google+ (Updated)

Stephen Hall Dec 16 2014 - 10:54 am PT

Google has decided to mix up the way it handles Google+ notifications, and you may have noticed the beginning of this shift yesterday afternoon when the design of the normal notification button changed suddenly. Previously a simple bell, the new button has a smaller bell within a circle (see above)…
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Google Plus

Google announces custom gender option for Google+ profile pages coming this week

Mike Beasley Dec 9 2014 - 4:49 pm PT

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Google has announced a new update to the profile editor on Google+ which introduces a new “custom” gender option. Rather than take the Facebook approach and present a long list of options, however, the setting instead shows a free-form text box and allows the user to type in anything they want.

A second field below that allows users to select a personal pronoun, with options for masculine, feminine, or non-specific settings. The old option to choose who can and can’t see the gender information listed on your profile will remain as well.

The update isn’t live for all users just yet, but Google says it will be rolled out “over the next few days.”

The full announcement, via Google+:

For many people, gender identity is more complex than just “male” or “female.” Starting today, I’m proud to announce that Google+ will support an infinite number of ways to express gender identity, by giving you the option to customize the way your gender is represented on your profile.

Previously, we provided options for “Male,” “Female,” and “Other,” to encompass both those who don’t fit into the traditional gender labels and those who don’t want to declare their gender to the world at large. Now, the gender field on your profile will contain four entries, “Male,” “Female,” “Decline to state,” and “Custom.” When “Custom” is selected, a freeform text field and a pronoun field will appear. You can still limit who can see your gender, just like you can now. We’ll be rolling this feature out for all users over the next few days.

Many thanks to the people and groups who gave us advice on the best ways to do this. Your input has been really valuable to us, and we hope you like the result!

Google+ adds ability to pin posts to profiles and pages

Chance Miller Dec 3 2014 - 4:00 pm PT

While Google+ may not always get the attention it deserves, Google this evening has announced a useful new feature for its users. In a post on the social network, Google employee Dennis Troper announced that users can now pin posts to the top of their profiles and pages.