Google+ Project – Google’s Latest Attempt on Social Networking

Image via CrunchBase

Google announces Google+ project, their latest take on social networking. Like a typical Social Network, Google+ is a new way to connect with others. But unlike the current Social Networks where your privacy can be at stake with the default settings, Google+ promises to help users manage their privacy in a lot more easier way. Google+ has the following features: Circles, Sparks, Hangouts and Mobile.

+Circles
With +Circles, you can sort out your connections in different groups, depending on how much those persons matters to you. The logic behind this is that people usually don’t share everything to everyone. There are some information you want only your close friends to know. There are times also that the information may only apply to your workmates. With Google+Circles, you can easily share the information you wanted to a specific group in of connections.

Probably, Google +Circles was the result of their massive learning from Google Buzz service which sparked online rage regarding privacy issues.

+Sparks
With Google+Sparks, you can receive feeds from topic you find interesting. From the word itself, +Sparks wants to initiate sharing by giving you “contagious” and highly interesting web content personally tailored on you.

+Hangouts
Google +Hangouts enables you to quickly start a video conferencing with your online friends and connections. You can have a simultaneous face-to-face conversation with at most 10 people in your circle of online friends.

+Mobile
Google spices up your mobile social experience with new features like +Instant Uploads which lets you quickly share pictures to a an online repository available for viewing and ready for sharing wherever you are no matter what device you are accessing it with.

Another feature of new +Mobile is the ability to share your location. This is, of course, comes with your permission. And lastly, +Huddle enables you to form a group chat with the members of your social circles.

Google+ project is not available for everyone as of the moment. The project is on a state of Field Trial, Google says. The prupose of which is find problems, issues or anything that needs to be immediately addressed.

Interestingly, initial reviews on Google+ were generally positive especially with regards to the aspect of privacy. Will this be the ultimate Facebook killer? It may be too early to conclude. It is the users who will decide if it really does.