Google+ gets site facelift

Google has unveiled a "few big improvements" to its Google+ social networking platform on Monday, on the heels of rivals Twitter and Facebook which have both announced major makeovers of their own.

Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product, Google+, Google, said in a blog post Monday that the basket of features and functionalities include improvements to existing ones as well as new ones requested from users. These enhancements are being rolled "over the next couple of days", he added.

Among these enhancements is a slider that allows users to "graphic-equalize" and control the volume of status updates and postings from their circles of friends that will be displayed in their main feed. Notifications, indicated by a red box, now show more preview information, while the photos feature has been "completely redesigned" along with new photo-tagging functionality.

Changes were also made for Google+ Pages, which are used by corporate subscribers. Companies can now assign up to 50 managers as administrators of a page and view an aggregated count of users who have interacted with their page, either by the +1 button or adding it to a circle, said Google.

This latest round of enhancements for Google+ comes after two of Google's biggest rivals--Twitter and Facebook--both announced site makeovers of their own.

Twitter unveiled its biggest site revamp on Dec. 9, which was described by analysts in a separate ZDNet Asia report as "overdue and necessary" so that it can grow its user base and boost its advertising revenue. Similarly, Facebook announced major site changes in September this year, including its Timeline profile feature which was officially released worldwide last week.