The Android Story

Infographic by Android Developers at [x]cubelabs

Google Plus (Google+) the new Social Media Era ?

Unless you had been living under a dungeon you should see tones of articles & online buzzing about Google's new Social Media project - The Google+ Project.

Google+ itself is made up of 5 core features - Circles, Stream, Hangouts, Sparks & Photos.


Circles is by far the most favorable features that the users love. In short it's similar to Facebook's friend lists & Twitter's List but with a better functionality. User send update Stream to particular circle so only friends within the circle see your update (privacy). If you like a user stream you can simply plus one it (yup +1 button is integrated in stream line) You can also start a Hangout (video chat, Google Talk engine) with particular circle or only with selected friends

Sparks allows user to choose the topics that matter to the user & generate news articles feeds (looks like articles are pulled from Google News). User can then share these articles directly to Google+

Photos functionality is supported by Picasa Web Album, in another word all the images you uploaded to Plus is stored within Picasa.

The core core of Google plus is Circle and everything is surrounded by the Circle idea that's based on Paul Adams - Social Circles.

As you may be aware by now, Google Plus itself is closely integrated with a couple Google's own branded products.

• Stream is closely integrated with +1 button (and it fits in the philosophy of plus one)
• Photos is closely integrated with Piscasa & hence now Google Plus user can use Piscasa with no storage limits (sweet!)
• Hangout is closely integrated with GTalk & its video conferencing features
• Sparks is linked with Google news (or Google search engine), in the future am not surprise it will allow user to import its Google Reader feeds (an integration with Google Reader)
• Mobile did i mentioned that Google Plus already rolled out its Android app last week and its iPhone app is already on its way for pending approval?
• Remember the new black bar that Google rolled out to its products last month? User can now post to Google plus using the share features on the black bar & mean while it also shows Google Plus notification. This bar is on almost all Google products and hence user don't have to always stay on Google Plus and they still can interact with Google Plus. 
• All your Google Plus friends are automatically port to your Google contacts, hence you can sync to your phone or chat with them using GTalk
• In addition your Google Profile becomes Google Plus Profile (provided you already in the circle)

As you can see everything is tightly integrated with each other and guess what? Yourself - the user is in the middle of all this (YOU are in the middle of the circle).

YOU are in the middle of the circle

Google had couple social attempts previously (Orkut, wave, & buzz) and they all fail, with the failure experience it had got from the past, the roll out of Plus was quickly compared with Facebook. Thus far 80% of the press are complementing Google's new product, mean while there are also critics on this products as well.

One of the biggest concerns from the press is 80% of the early adopters are male and seems like most of them are heavy tech savvy, which jumps to the question whether Google Plus is meant for Geeks.
Another huge concerns was your connections. Most people connections are either on Facebook or Twitter but not on Google Plus (just yet). A social network platform with no friends will simply make people want to quit.

The above concerns are valid and it's due to the fact that Google Plus still under private beta and there is a huge demand of invitation. In the past few days Google seems to open the invitation more often in comparison to previous week. I can see more of my Tweet peeps & Facebook buddies jumping on Google Plus and adding me to their circles.

A fact that cannot be doubted is Google Plus is gaining huge traction and momentum, users love it so far and are inviting more and more people to join in the private beta. Users are also sending their thoughts and feedback to Google mean while Google software engineers are reply questions and providing update on Google Plus platform itself (yup no email back & forth)

Stream from Kelly Ellis - Google Software Engineer 

Some tips & tricks about Google Plus
Thus far I enjoyed using Google Plus and so do other users, hence there are a lot of by-products appear online that help users using Google Plus (some are official from Google, some are from third party users)

1. Numerous browser plugins / extension (mainly are chrome) to help you interact with Google Plus. 
2. Google official released profile button that allow user to put it on the sites & blogs
3. User can get a vanity URL for their Google Plus here  
4. At the moment Google Plus Android app only available in US. Non US user can get the apk file here

I believe Google Plus has quite a potential, as it can easily showcase the functionality of Facebook Twitter & LinkedIn mean while porting it in with other Google Products seems logical. It would be interesting to see how this product do in the long run.

If you are already on Google Plus, please feel free to add me on your circles

Mean while do let us know your thoughts on Google's Social Attempt, we would love to hear from you