It's "put up or shut up" time for Google+ now that the social network - which is widely viewed as the biggest threat to Facebook's dominance - has unlocked the front door for everyone. And from what the company has done in its first few hours of making G+ a publicly available service suggests that Google is bringing its A-game - and not just going after Facebook.
The service started strong and took off fast as tech bloggers and geeks galore started singing its praises - myself included. Since then, I've only grown fonder of it - and Facebook has been scrambling to keep up and stay relevant. For example, the concept of circles - creating them, filtering by them and easily posting to them - was so great that Facebook followed suit by revamping its "Lists" feature.
But Hangouts - video chats between 10 users on Google+ - is where we get a sense of how much A-game Google has. In its post announcing the public rollout of Google, the company highlighted some pretty cool new features for Hangouts:
Whether or not it takes off and can live in harmony with Facebook, Twitter and Even Apple's Facetime - or whether it will become a bigger disruption to any of their models - has yet to be seen. But if Google keeps innovating and welcoming more tools and features from the app developers, it could change the way people work, play and communicate in the future.
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