about google +

Google+
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Google+

Google+ logo

Google+ interface
URL plus.google.com
Slogan Real-life sharing rethought for the web.
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Social network, identity service
Registration Required
Available language(s) Multilingual
Users 100 million[citation needed]
Owner Google
Launched June 28, 2011; 9 months ago
Current status Active
Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus, sometimes abbreviated as G+) is a social networking and identity service,[1][2] operated by Google Inc.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 History
3 Features
4 Technologies
5 Reception
5.1 Design impact
5.2 Importing contacts from other social networks
5.3 Censorship by governments
5.3.1 "Occupy Obama's G+"
5.4 Controversies
5.4.1 Nymwars
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
[edit]Introduction

The service was launched as an invitation-only "field test".[3] Early invites were soon suspended due to an "insane demand" for new accounts.[4] On September 20, 2011, Google+ was opened to everyone 18 years of age or older without the need for an invitation. [5] It was opened for a younger age group (13+ years old in US and most countries, 14+ in South Korea and Spain, 16+ in Netherlands) on January 26, 2012.[6][7]
Google+ integrates social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz, and introduces new services identified as Circles, Hangouts and Sparks.[8] Google+ is available as a website and on mobile devices. Sources such as The New York Times have declared it Google's biggest attempt to rival the social network Facebook,[9] which has over 800 million users.[10] Google+ is considered the company's fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz (launched 2010, retired in 2011), Google Friend Connect (launched 2008, to be retired by March 2012) and orkut (launched in 2004, now operated entirely by subsidiary Google Brazil).
On January 19, 2012, it was reported that Google+ had surpassed a user base of 90 million.[11] According to independent analysis of its growth in December 2011, the site was adding an estimated number of 625,000 new users a day, which may total 400 million members by the end of 2012.[12] The site's popularity accelerated in December 2011, with almost a quarter of its total user base joining in December alone, said Paul B. Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com, who tracks the numbers as the "unofficial statistician" for Google+. [13] However, on February 28, 2012 Todd Wasserman from Mashable reported Google+ users are only spending 3.3 minutes monthly on Google+ which is a downward trend from 4.8 minutes in December and 5.1 minutes in November compared to Facebook users currently spending 7.5 hours using Facebook monthly. [14]
[edit]History

The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invitation-only "field testing" phase.[3] The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age[15] to the service to create their own accounts. This was suspended the next day due to an "insane demand" for accounts.[4]
On July 14, 2011, Google announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after the launch of a "limited" trial phase.[16] After four weeks in operation, it had reached 25 million unique visitors.[17] Based on ComScore, the biggest market was the United States followed by India.[18] In October 2011, the service reached 40 million users, according to Larry Page;[19] by the end of the year Google+ had 90 million users.[20]
On August 6, each Google+ member had 150 invitations to give out,[21] but on September 20, 2011, Google+ was opened to everyone 18 years of age or older without the need for an invitation.[5] After Google+ went public, users registered to Google+, but those under 18 years of age were unable to sign up for Google+.[22]
At the initial launch, Google Apps accounts could not be used on Google+ due to lack of support for Google Profiles.[23][24][25] On October 27, Google announced that Google+ now supports Google Apps users (if the user's domain administrator has enabled the service).[26]
Despite experiencing high growth in the U.S and European markets, Google+ still remains unavailable in mainland China. While it is not technically "blocked" it was made impossible to use by slowing it down to a crawl.[27]
In under a day, the Google+ iPhone app became the most popular free application in the Apple app store.[28]
Early adopters of Google+ have been mostly male (71.24%). The dominant age bracket (35%) is between 25 and 34.[29]
A survey estimates 13% of U.S. adults have joined Google+; it is projected to have 22% of U.S. adults in a year.[30]
On November 7, 2011, Google launched Google+ Pages, which will let businesses connect with fans in a manner similar to Facebook Pages. These businesses will receive corporate accounts to start sharing information about themselves and invite others to join in on the conversation.[31][32]
On January 26, 2012, Google opened Google+ to teenagers. The age limit had previously been 18, but Google Vice President for Product Management Bradley Horowitz announced on Google+ that users could now be as young as 13. [33]
According to Experian Hitwise, an Internet metrics firm, the number of U.S. visits to Google+ surpassed 49 million during the one-month period ending Dec. 11, 2011, a 55% increase from the one-month period ending Nov. 11, 2011. [34]
[edit]Features



An example of the Google+ stream.


Google staff starting to set up for the President's first Google+ Hangout in the Roosevelt Room of the West Wing. Aired live on the White House Google+ page on January 30, 2012.[35]


President Obama answered questions about the State of the Union posed by citizens in the first-ever completely virtual interview from the White House. Aired live on the official White House Google+ page on January 30, 2012 at 5.30 pm.[35]
In the "Stream," which occupies the middle of three columns on the page, users see updates from those in their Circles. There is an input box which allows users to enter a post. Along with the text entry field there are icons to upload and share photos and videos. The Stream can be filtered to show only posts from specific Circles.
"Circles" enable users to organize people into groups for sharing[36] across various Google products and services. Although other users may be able to view a list of people in a user's collection of Circles, they cannot view the names of those Circles. The privacy settings also allow users to hide the users in their Circles as well as who has them in their Circle. Organization is done through a drag-and-drop interface. This system replaces the typical friends list function used by sites such as Facebook. Since September 26, 2011 users can share Circles; it's a one-time share, so if the creator of the Circle updates the members, people's shared copies won't be updated.
Another function of Circles is to control the content of one's Stream. A user may click on a Circle on the left side of the page and the Stream portion of the page (the center) will contain only posts shared by users in that Circle. For the unsegmented Stream (includes content from all of a user's Circles), each Circle has a "slider" configuration item with four positions: nothing, some things, most things, and everything. The nothing position requires the user to select (click on) the Circle name explicitly to see content from users in that Circle. The everything setting as its name implies filters nothing out from people in that Circle. The remaining two positions control the quantity of posts which appear in one's main Stream, but the algorithm controlling what shows has not been disclosed.
The default "Circles" are Friends, Family, Acquaintances, and Following. Users cannot change anything but the content slider and membership about these Circles (for example, they cannot be renamed or deleted).[citation needed]
The "Following" Circle is described by Google+ as "People you don't know personally, but whose posts you find interesting."[citation needed]
"Hangouts" are places used to facilitate group video chat (with a maximum of 10 people participating in a single Hangout at any point in time). However, anyone on the web could potentially join the "Hangout" if they happen to possess the unique URL of the Hangout.[36] On August 18, 2011 Google added a new addition to "Hangouts" - clicking on the Share button under any YouTube video reveals an icon that suggests watching the video with friends in a Google+ hangout.[37]
Mobile Hangouts currently supports Android 2.3+ devices with front-facing cameras (and iOS support is coming soon) are available since September 20, 2011.
Hangouts On-Air gives users the ability to create instant webcasts over Google+. The broadcasts can also be recorded for later retrieval. This feature, announced on September 20, 2011, is currently limited to some videocast personalities, but the announcement indicates that it will be opened up. The first publicly broadcasted Hangout was with The Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am on the night of September 21, 2011.[38]
Hangouts with Extras, currently in a preview state, will allow users to share documents, share a scratchpad and share their screens with other users.[39]
"Messenger" (formerly: Huddle) is a feature available to Android, iPhone, and SMS devices for communicating through instant messaging within Circles. Additionally, you can now share photos in Messenger between your Circles.[36]
"Instant Upload" is specific to mobile devices; it stores photos or videos in a private album for sharing later.[36]
"Sparks" is a front-end to Google Search, enabling users to identify topics they might be interested in sharing with others. "Featured interests" sparks are also available, based on topics others globally are finding interesting.[36] Sparks helps to keep users informed of the latest updates on the topics of their interest.
"Games" (social gaming) had 16 games when launched on August 11, 2011[40], which has since been expanded to 38.[citation needed] Unlike Facebook games, Google+ games are located under a games tab, which gives games less visibility,[41] and have notifications that are separate from the rest of a user's notifications.[41]
Google+ has a "+1 button" to allow people to recommend sites and parts of sites, similar in use to Facebook's Like button.[42]
Google recently announced that since introducing this +1 button, it is now being served more than 5 billion times per day.[43]
With the implementation of the +1 button, Google hopes to make search results more "germane".[44] This will not directly affect search rankings.[44]
Similar to other Google applications, Google+ provides integration with other Google applications like Gmail, Calendar, Documents, etc.
A "Data Liberation" option provides the ability to download one's content from Google+.[45]
"Search in Google+" allows users to search for content within Google+. Users type what they're looking for into the Google+ search box, and Google will return relevant people and posts, as well as popular content from around the web.[46]
Hashtags, which involve the prepending of a number sign to the beginning of a word or CamelCase, are hyperlinked to the most recent or highest-trending search results within Google+ containing the term. This, a feature which gained notoriety as a microblogging practice on Twitter, was implemented as a Google+ feature on October 12, 2011. Autocompletion came on January 17, 2012.[47]
"New Features for Google+ Mobile" Since the launch of Google+, Google has been adding and improving many features. On September 30, 2011, the company released a list of changes and additions to Google+ mobile which include:[48]
Improved SMS support so that users in the US and India can now post to Google+, receive notifications, and respond to group messages via SMS. They have also made it easier to +mention someone from a mobile device. Now, to +mention another user, one simply writes +[their name] inside a post or comment. In order to +1 comments more easily, users are now able to +1 them directly from their iOS devices. They also introduced this feature to the Android app in December 2011.
Users are now able to edit their profile photos from a mobile device.
Google has now made it simple to organize Google+ notifications from a mobile device. This feature allows users to select which notifications are important to them and which are not so that their mobile devices are not inundated with superfluous notifications.
"What's hot" Stream, introduced on October 27, 2011, is a stream showing what Google+ users are currently excited about.[49] Initially it appeared in the middle of a user's stream as a separate collapsable section. As of February 2012, it still appears in the middle of one's Stream, but it behaves more like a Circle in that it has a slider control; thus a user may turn it off completely (except for it being listed on the left side of the page) by sliding the slider for it to the nothing position. For some, the appearance of What's Hot in Streams was such an annoying (mis)feature that it was listed as one of Google+'s known issues.
Ripples, introduced on October 27, 2011, is a visualisation tool, showing how resharing activity happens regarding a public post. One can replay the public share's activity, zoom in on certain events, identify top contributors, view statistics about average chain length, the most influential people in the chain, the language of the sharers, etc.[49]
Google+ Creative Kit is an online photo editor integrated to Google+ on October 27, 2011,[49] which is essentially Picnik, integrated earlier to Picasa Web Albums.
Google+ Pages was launched on November 7, 2011 to all users.[50] It allows entities which are not individuals (such as organizations, companies, and publications) to set up profiles, or "pages," for the posting and syndication of posts. It is similar to Facebook's similarly-named feature. At the same time, Google changed the site's logo and favicon, from black to a red one, matching the colour of the coral notification icon.[51]
Google+ Badges was quietly rolled out to select enterprises beginning 9 November 2011 and officially released to the public on 16 November.[52] Badges are sidebar widgets which embed "Add to Circles" buttons and drop-down lists into off-site websites and blogs, similar to Facebook's Like Box widgets. This was officially treated by Google as a replacement for the older Google Friend Connect and its widgets, and GFC was announced by Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Hölzle on 23 November 2011, as scheduled to be retired by 12 March 2012 on all non-Blogger sites in favor of Google+ Page Badges.[53]
Select public figures have verified names. Google determines whether a particular profile warrants verification. The purpose is to indicate to site visitors whether a particular profile belongs to who one would generally expect the name to be, and not someone who coincidentally has the same name as a public figure. Verified identity profiles have a checkmark logo after their name. Examples of profiles bearing the verified name badge include Linus Torvalds, William Shatner, Leo Laporte, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.[54]
[edit]Technologies

According to Joseph Smarr, technical lead on the Google+ team (former Plaxo CTO) Google+ is a typical Google web application: it uses Java servlets for the server code and JavaScript for the browser-side of the UI, largely built with Google's Closure framework, including the JavaScript compiler and the template system. They use the HTML5 History API to maintain good looking URLs in modern browsers despite it being an AJAX app. To achieve fast response times Google often renders the Closure templates on the server-side to render it before any JavaScript is loaded; then the JavaScript finds the right DOM nodes, hooks up event handlers etc. The backends are built mostly on top of BigTable and Colossus/GFS, and other common Google technologies such as MapReduce.[55]
[edit]Reception

[edit]Design impact
The introduction of Google Plus had an impact on the graphic redesign of Google's web search service.[56][57][58] CNN noted the "combo-plate approach" of Google+, likening the new social effort to a "Taco-Bell-meets-KFC."[59] As it was explained later, Google+'s new look is actually part of a broader effort to refresh the visual design across Google, to achieve a consistent experience in all products across the Google spectrum.[60][61]
In particular, there have been changes to Picasa Web Albums, whereby all Picasa users images will automatically join their Google Plus image storage.[62] Google also plans to rebrand Picasa as Google Photos.[63] Other changes:
After tagging someone, they receive a notification and can see the photo and the related album.
For new albums, anyone an album is shared with can see who else it is shared with.
Albums someone shared can be tagged and re-shared by others.
Photos up to 2048×2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards the 1 GB storage quota for Google+ users (it is 800×800 pixels for non-Google+ users), creating "virtually unlimited" storage for mobile users.
Google Maps got the redesign on June 28, 2011.[64] A redesigned Gmail and Calendar interface was first available at July 1, 2011.[65][66] The Google News redesign went live on July 21, 2011[67] and Google Docs got a new look on August 5, 2011.[68]
The new Google Reader interface was made available on October 31, 2011. Beside the sweeping visual changes, former social features ("share" and "like" buttons) have been replaced by a Google +1 button and the "share on Google+" box. It's said that now Reader is on its fourth social model, after using Google Talk contacts, allowing people to manage friends from the Reader interface and then integrating with Google Buzz.[69][70]
Further design developments related to Google+ occurred in January 2012. On January 10, Google released "Search plus Your World", which inserts content shared on Google+ profiles and brand pages under Web Search results. The feature, which is opt-in, was received with controversy over the emphasis of Google+ profiles over other social networking services' user profiles (i.e., Facebook and Twitter). The feature builds upon the earlier "Social Search" feature which indexes content shared or published by authors; "Social Search", however, relied partly upon returns from non-Google services, such as Twitter and Flickr.
[edit]Importing contacts from other social networks
Google+ includes a feature to invite contacts from Yahoo! and Hotmail.[71] At this time, however, there is no official way to import Facebook contacts into Google+; but there are some workarounds to achieve it.[72] Facebook allows users to download their data, but not in a simple format easy to import; network effects make it difficult for a new social network such as Google+ to be successful, and an easy tool to migrate to a rival service would reduce the effect.[73]
[edit]Censorship by governments
Within a day of the website's launch, various news agencies reported that Google+ was blocked by the People's Republic of China.[74] This is part of a wider policy of censorship in mainland China.[75] The Iranian government has also blocked access to Google+ from 11 July 2011,[76] as part of Internet censorship in Iran.[77]
[edit]"Occupy Obama's G+"
On 20 February, 2012, Internet users from the People's Republic of China realized that state restrictions on Google+ had been relaxed for unknown reasons, allowing them to post on Google+ pages.[78] In particular, Chinese users began to inundate the official election campaign pages of U.S. president Barack Obama on Google+ with often-off-topic comments in simplified Chinese characters.[79]
The "occupation" of Obama's G+ page is largely considered[by whom?] a temporary mistake in Chinese censorship by observers outside of China,[citation needed] as Google reduced its physical presence in mainland China.[citation needed]
[edit]Controversies
Joining the service requires mandatory real-name and gender disclosure, which at launch was shared as public information.[80] The gender selector has options for "Male", "Female", and "Other". This requirement was criticized by the weblog SlashGear for causing lack of privacy and, together with Facebook and other social networks, for forcing the user to choose among limited categories that describe preconceived gender descriptors.[81] The mandatory public gender exposure led to criticism for making older Google profiles public.[82] In response, Google made changes to the service that allow users to control the privacy settings of their gender information.[83] Google's justification for requiring gender information is that it uses that information to inform its usage of the terms "he," "she," and "they" in their delivery of information to users of the service. If a user decides to make the gender portion of the profile private, the language used to convey information becomes gender-neutral, using the singular they in place of gender-specific pronouns.[84]
Google+ allows its users to +1 and recommend items across the web to their friends and contacts. However, it offers no control on who sees people's +1s (includes +1s on Google ads and third party sites). Since anyone can add others to their circle without getting confirmed/approved, anyone can potentially see other's +1s . Google displays +1 to a user based on his/her social connections. If a person adds another to their circle, he/she will be added to their social connection. However, Google allows its users to either hide or show +1 tab on their profile and all +1's are manageable from the +1 tab.
[edit]Nymwars
Main article: Nymwars
Google+ requires some users to identify themselves using their real names and accounts may be suspended when this requirement is not met.[85][86] Google VP Bradley Horowitz