Google+’s (g+) new social networking platform is so simple that it’s complicated. What? Here, I’m going to try to break down g+ to help counter the counterintuitive social platform. It might help if you first go play with g+ and realize you’re a little confused or lost.
From what I have gathered, there are 4 features that g+ currently offer: Stream, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddle.
g+ Circles: I don’t consider g+’s “circles” an actual feature. It’s more a way of organizing people you are connected to on g+, kind of your choosing who your separate audiences will be. The first thing you should do when joining g+ is add users to circles. When adding a new friend in the future, you will do the same thing by simply dragging them into an appropriate circle. Note: when adding people to circles, they will see that you have added them but they will not be able to see the name of the circle you put them in. Go ahead, put that status-update obsessive friend in your “annoying” circle. Now to move on to actual features.
g+ Stream: Very much like your Facebook newsfeed, your Stream is the main source of activity on g+. First, attach what you want to post (text, pictures, link, video, or location) and right underneath, you choose who you publish to. This chart gives you an idea of who you will publish to for what purpose:
| Publish To | Comparable To | Thoughts |
| Public | Unprotected Twitter | Incorporating a twitter like feature into a Facebook like platform – Genius. g+ gets an A+. Example: You add a celebrity into your “Celebrity” circle. They post publicly, you see it. You post, they don’t see it (unless you’re awesome and they added you into their circles and choose to view that circle’s posts in their stream). |
| Circles | Posting to groups on Facebook but much more useful. | Really allows you to compartmentalize your social networking life in one place, instead of having separate sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn etc.You choose which circle to publish your posts to. Example: Share your latest tech finding with only your coworkers and pictures of last night’s shenanigans only with your close friends. |
| Extended Circles | Varies with privacy settings in Facebook | Publish things 2 degrees out of your circle (your circles, and your circles’ circles) Example: “Looking for an intern for my new startup company!” It’ll hit friends of friends, screening off a good amount of crazy out there. |
| Individuals | Writing on someone’s wall or Twitter’s direct messaging | I had some friends complain that they can’t post on peoples’ walls anymore. However, you can! Publish strictly to that individual and that post will only show up on your friend’s and your stream. |
g+ Hangout: Group video chatting via Google. It’s about time! You can even share/watch Youtube videos together. If you start a hangout with an entire circle, if they see it on their stream, they can join at any time. Of course you can also just hang out with one or two people and the rest of the g+ world will not know it is happening. I hope Google updates g+ soon so we can view multiple screens at a large size (currently you have to choose the best looking person in your group chat to view larger and the rest are thumbnail sized).
g+ Sparks: I’ll get back to you on that one. So far it looks like a chat room set up to me, have yet to explore it.
g+ Huddle: Possibly my favorite g+ feature, only available on the g+ mobile app. Group text messaging! First thing I thought was: planning excursions with large groups just got so much more efficient! I don’t need to blast out a text to my group of 20 friends that I want to invite to my BBQ anymore. Add them all to the huddle (assuming they have the mobile app) and shoot out one text that reaches them all and have a conversation that keeps everyone in the loop without sending 20 identical messages to each person.
And the last thing I’ll talk about is privacy. Privacy is a big deal when it comes to anything online. My friend was telling me she was trying to figure out how to make her posts private on g+ and I thought about it – by nature of the way g+ is set up, everything is private until you choose to publish to a circle, individual or public. Of course if you accidently publish it to the wrong circle, you might be in big doo doo, but that’s entirely on you. For your profile, you can set each section’s (employment, education, etc.) privacy settings.