Google+ Now Opens for All

Google+ is the first social service launched by Google that's actually successful.

Its 3-months since the inception of Google's social networking tool: Google Plus. Google+ is now available to anyone who has a Google account; it no longer requires invites.

Vic Gundotra, Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering, posted the following message to the Google Blog announcing open sign-ups:

For the past 12 weeks we've been in field trial, and during that time we've listened and learned a great deal. We're nowhere near done, but with the improvements we've made so far we're ready to move from field trial to beta.

You can just visit Google home page for joining Google Plus (as in image below). Once you click the link, you will be re-directed to Google Plus registration page. Furthermore if you roll over the blue arrow, the following popup appears: “You’re invited to join Google+.”

Google Plus has improved a lot, more quickly than any other Google product ever launched.

Google added support for 

- Hangouts in the Android app and added the option to broadcast a Hangout (for limited users as of now). You can preview by clicking "Try Hangouts with extras": screensharing, sketchpad, Google Docs integration and named hangouts "for when you want to join or create a public hangout about a certain topic".

- The search box is now more useful because you can use it to find posts from your friends and from other Google+ users. Google also lets you restrict your results to people and save your search.

A Comscore report from August estimated that "in just one month, Google+ has captured 25 million visitors". Now when there is no restriction on the invites, the number will certainly grow.

»»  read more

The New and Improved Google Plus (+1) Button

The +1 buttons are used by the visitors to recommend your content on Google Search along with their Google Profiles. Clicking the +1 button is a great way to highlight content for others when they search on Google. The +1 button comes with further more inprovements,



1) Share Links: The +1 button now lets visitors share links to your pages on Google+. If someone wants to start a conversation about your content, it’s easy for them to do so. Now, Google+ users can share webpages with their circles, directly from the +1 button. From there you can comment, choose a circle and share.

                              

2) Snipets: Now you can use +Snippets to customize the name, image and description that appear when your content is shared.

When you share content from the +1 button, you’ll notice that we automatically include a link, an image and a description in the sharebox. This is called as "+snippets,".

+Snippets let you put your best face forward by customizing exactly what appears when your content is shared.

For example, if you’re running a movie review site, you might want visitors to share posts containing the title, movie poster, and a brief synopsis:

3) Inline Annotations: The new inline annotations help increase engagement after users see a friend’s recommendation right on your page.

Now, when a person visits a page that someone they know has +1’d, they can see a name and face reminding them to pay special attention to your content. Here’s how it looks:

To add inline annotations, you need to update your +1 button code. Visit the configuration tool , select ‘inline’ from the ‘Annotation’ menu, and grab a new snippet of code. 

 

The new features (sharing and +snippets) are rolling out globally over the next week. You can try the new +1 button now, by joining Google+ Platform Preview. Once you're part of the Preview, just visit a site with the +1 button (like Rotten Tomatoes) and +1 the page. 

»»  read more