Google+ updates: Improved stream, photo tagging, sneak previews

By | December 19, 2011, 6:47am PST

Summary: Google has just announced a few early Christmas presents for its users. What can we expect from the Google+ platform?

As an early Christmas present, Google has just announced adjustments planned to the Google+ social network.

We can expect the rollout to happen over the next few days. Here is a summary of the proposed changes you should expect to discover over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday.

Fine-tuning your circles: Google is modifying circle controls so you will be able to “graphic equalize” and fine-tune your stream. When you are viewing a particular circle, you will now be able to adjust how many posts end up blending in to the main stream via a slider at the top.

Notifications: If you’re a Gmail fan, no doubt you’ve probably seen the newly redesigned Google toolbar. Now, there is a red notifications indicator as part of the package.

Google has now included ’sneak previews’ of the notification itself — something I consider a vast improvement on the previous system. It shows what’s new, and clearly.

You can also now see the +1’s and shares your posts have received since any previous check in real-time.

Photos: The Google+ Photos component isn’t necessarily the most user-friendly aspect of the Google+ package. Google have now decided to better integrate Lightbox — one of the most popular slideshow scripts currently available — to instigate better usability and comment legibility.

The web giant is taking a leaf out of the Facebook bible, and plans to improve the photo facility by adding a new tagging system.

Google+ Pages: The social network now enables businesses to be able to assign up to 50 administrators, and has also included a new notifications stream to allow better page management.

Businesses will also be able to view an aggregated count of users that have engaged with their page, either by +1’ing it or by adding it to a circle. This gives both the business and the page’s visitors can get an immediate summary of who is interacting with the page.

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London-based medical anthropologist Charlie Osborne is a journalist, graphic designer and former teacher.

Disclosure

Charlie Osborne

I have no current affiliations or relationships that are worth noting.

Biography

Charlie Osborne

Charlie Osborne, Medical Anthropologist who studied at the University of Kent, UK, is a journalist, graphic designer and former teacher.

After studying Anthropology at university, she spent several years travelling and working across Europe and the Middle East, living for periods of time in Italy and Spain. She has been involved in the running of several businesses ranging from University media and events to b2b sales, and works currently as a freelance website designer and mobile development specialist.

She has particular interests in social media, intellectual property law, data protection and online hacker organisations.

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Please remind me..
techsdfdsblogger 20th Dec
Please remind me.. what is Google+
"Google is modifying circle controls so you will be able to 'graphic equalize' and fine-tune your stream."

Yay! Hopefully it works as advertised. The signal to noise ratio is very important to any social network, and IMO Google+ is doing a far better job than Facebook with this.
@CobraA1

The "having your friends on it" is very important to any social network. wink
Google.. what?

"Google Rapidly-Following-Wave-Into-The-Sunset"
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Please remind me..
techsdfdsblogger 20th Dec
Please remind me.. what is Google+

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