What's new in Google+ (Google Plus)

Seems this has been the most eventful month from the guys at Google+ (Google Plus). They have laid out an awesome list of offerings and challenged competition.

One of the best till date is:

1. Google+ APIs

With the post aptly titled "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", Chris Chabot shared the news of Google+ (GooglePlus) unveiling the APIs on 16th.

What can you do with the API?? 

If you are thinking that the API shall be incorporated with your favorite Social Media tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, let me tell you, this could take a while as the current API are read-only. Which means, you cannot post externally.

So how will it help??

It will help you to retrieve posts, public profiles and build some analytics around it. 

More details here.

2. Google+ Hangouts

Yes, Google+ (GooglePlus) Hangouts have been there since their launch, but seems the +Team has been trying to improve it ever since. On 10th of this month (9/10) it released the "Take the floor" feature which allows users to (From +Chee Chew):

1) have everyone mute their audio.
2) when you want to sign something, hit Shift+s.
3) when you see yourself as the main video, that's your cue. you've got the floor... everyone's main video has switched to you. sign away.

What does it mean??

If you happen to be in any of the hangout session, very frequently it the person with the maximum amount of noise (background or otherwise) would have got on the screen, irrespective of whether they wanted it or not. The new feature eliminates it by having you do the "Shift+S" to get you on the main video & once you're on, speak up.

3. Photo Locking

On the 8th, +Matt Steiner's team added the ability to lock photos on your Google+ account, thereby limiting the sharing of your photos. The security feature for the photos can be applied from 2 different places - photos page & stream.

A word of caution though, the post containing your photo also gets locked.


Matt Steiner's Post.

4. Mobility Updates

The first week of the month saw a slew of updates for the mobility devices.

a. +1 button on mobile web

1st of September saw the +1 button, which enables users to share content on Google+ (Google Plus) was released for the mobile web. The latest release allowed users ability to share content as they surf, without any inhibitions :-)

b. New iOS app

On 6th, the new release of Google+ for the iOS platform. The latest release gave an ability to the users to reshare posts from the Apple devices. An arrow at the bottom allowed users to reshare content & also the ability to select the users with whom it can be shared.

The same was released for the non-iOS platforms (read Android) on 7th.

Thanks for reading through. Do drop in your comments, feedbacks & will be glad to hear them.

Great Day!!


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