Friday, 7 December 2012
Google+ rolls out Communities feature; grows to 135 mln active users
Posted on 01:07 by Maria Scott
Google has ceaselessly worked to improve its social networking venture
Google+ and increase the user engagement on the site. Google's latest
effort to ramp up Google+ comes in the form a new 'Communities' feature.
With Communities, Google+ users can join/create groups devoted a
particular set of interest such as work project, photography, soccer
team and so on.
"Today we're launching two new improvements that help bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software," Google's
senior vice president, Vic Gundotra, said in a blog post. Communities
allows Google+ users to create "permanent homes for all the stuff you
love ... the wonderful, the weird, and yes, even the things that are
waaay out there," Gundotra added.
Google+ Communities gives users public
or private membership for people looking for a platform to share their
opinions with other like-minded users. Discussion categories can be of
any topic a user wants to create. Google has also integrated the option
to start Hangouts, plan events with fellow users and share/recommend a
favourite community by clicking the +1 button.
You can spot the new “Communities” icon as a green circle with three
floating heads. The roll-out is in its initial stage right and if you
are looking to be part of any network, you'll be glad to know there's
already National Geographic's Exploration, Liverpool FC Fans, and the
Star Wars group. Google will be making the feature available on mobile
devices very soon.
Despite allegations of Google+ being a ghost town,
Google says its social networking service has shown signs of sustained
growth. The service has now more than 135 million monthly active users,
up from 100 million registered in September.
“We have a momentum story,” says vice
president Brad Horowitz. “We're absolutely thrilled by the adoption and
uptake,” he said, adding that Google+ features—such as the “+1” button,
which is similar to Facebook’s “Like” button—increasingly have been
embedded in other parts of Google, including its search engine and
business listings.
According to Google, such integrations have a huge impact with 235 million people per month now use Google+ features across all Google sites, up from 150 million in late June.
Launch of Google+ Communities comes
along with roll-out of an Android version of the popular Snapseed photo
app from Nik Software, which Google had taken over in September. The
Android app comes with the ability to share your creations via Google+
and other services.
Also dubbed as Instagram-competitor, the
Snapseed app is now also available for free on Apple's App Store. Read
more about the launch of Snapseed photo app for Android here. In the meanwhile, check out video below where Google illustrates its new Communities feature.
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