It is no secret that I am a huge Google+ (or Plus) fan. I was using Google+ before it was open to the public and have used it ever since. I have seen it’s highs…June 2011 to Jun 2013, where the entire world used G+ and it’s lows (2013 to 2017) where it was mostly used in Europe only.
The mainstream media wrote off Google back in 2015 as being a viable player in the social networking area primarily due to Google not selling it’s sole to the devils..or devils as it may be. As a result, many of my friends left to go back to Facebook and Twitter to fight trolls and craziness.
But Google+ survived, changed to a new stream format in 2017 that was not as awesome as it should have been, but still was a better format of streaming social media than the other bigger dogs of the social networking area.
Announcements Being Made
Fortunately, today Leanne Osborne from Google posted in the All that is Google+ community on Google+ an outline of all that Google enhanced to G+ in 2017 and offered some exciting new features being developed in 2018 I am sure will excite a large number of users.. especially businesses. Following is what Leanne had to say.
2017 in Perspective
Happy New Year, Google+! It’s been quite the year since New Google+ began its maiden voyage. Time for a “blast to the past” with an overview of what happened in 2017!
We started off the year and officially turned down Classic Google+, and New Google+ became the only platform we supported. This big step was only the beginning in fully committing to developing dedicated Google+ features.
We also joined GSuite and announced at Google Cloud Next that we were increasing our focus on developing an enterprise version of Google+ for GSuite customers. So we started working on this exciting endeavor alongside consumer Google+!
We also introduced Discover, a new feature that helps you learn about different topics and cater them towards your specific interests. A lot of this year was also spent on quality of life improvements, particularly features focusing on profiles, communities, search improvements, and tools to help you fight spam.
Speaking of features, here are the features we released to you last year:
• Responsive design
• ‘Your Influence’ profile metrics
• Chronological hashtags
• Notifications improvements (unbundling +1 notifications, fixing actor-action mismatches, ‘Load More’ button on the One Google Bar, improved email notifications)
• 360° Photos
• Member Activity View in communities
• Discover and Topics streams
• Improved Google+ Search
• Additional community stream sorting
• Comment preview box
• Bulk Ask-to-Join moderation for communities
• Enhanced the photos lightbox by including the social sidebar
• ‘Remove, Report, & Ban’ for communities
• New profile cards for the Web client
• ‘Open in a New Tab’ & hovercards for the Notifications page
• Communities Insights metrics
• Google+ Search operators
• Bulk moderation of posts for communities
• ‘Delete, Report, & Block’ comments in your profile posts
Overall, we had quite an eventful year, with more feature developments to come in 2018!
Interested in Testing Google+ Features?
If you’re a user who’s as passionate about Google+ as we are, apply to become a beta tester for our product. We’re looking for people who want to test out new features and discuss them with both our product team and fellow beta testers. Our goal is to make Google+ the place to share your interests. Want to know what it takes?
Here’s what we’re looking for:
• Active poster on Google+
• Motivated to learn more about Google+ and contribute to product discussion
• Eagerness to provide high-level feedback on our product
If you’re interested in applying, fill out the application form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf1RQl1bWCtk8iKgnjhkAjenK2nNcHFegC7RfdK5yYpIm-frg/viewform
Hopefully, this will motivate you to use Google+ or at least go back to using G+ so to get ready for the changes being made. When you get over to G+, look me up and put me in your Circle. Here is where you can find me. Scot Duke
