Oh, Facebook watch out: Google Monday announced a "few big improvements" to Google+ that help amp up the social networking site even more, literally and in other ways.
As described by Bradley Horowitz, Google+ v-p of product, on Google's blog, users can now "pump up (or down) the volume" on their posts:
Sometimes important posts you wouldn’t want to miss from close friends or family can get lost amongst posts from others who post dozens of times a day. We’re adding fine-grained controls that will enable you to “graphic-equalize” and fine-tune your stream. When viewing the stream for a particular circle, you’ll now see a slider at the top that lets you adjust how posts from that circle should be blended into the main stream. That way you’ll never miss a post from that special someone, and you can tweak these settings to form your own “perfect stream.”
Google+ Photos are easier to use and pur-tier to display in Lightbox, "just in time for the holiday photo-sharing season":
Viewing a photo in Lightbox has been completely redesigned with improved navigation, enhanced comment legibility and better overall utility. This design makes the photo the hero, letting the content itself shine through. And we’re introducing a completely new photo-tagging experience that’s both fun and fluid, and lets you quickly focus on the people in your photos.
Notifications, too, are getting more useful, with "easy-to-read “sneak previews” that "immediately present what’s new and why you might care. We’ve polished these notifications up and made a few other meaningful improvements too, including the ability to see the +1’s and shares your posts have received since you last checked."
There will also be changes to Google+ Pages, which since its introduction last month, "already provided brands and businesses a new means of connecting to and deeply engaging with consumers." These features, among the "most oft-requested," are being added:
- You can now delegate up to 50 named managers as administrators for a page.
- A new notification flow will ensure that these managers stay in the loop on all the activity that takes place on a page, giving managers the ability to stay involved in page conversations.
- We’ll now show an aggregated count of users that have engaged with your page, either by +1’ing it or by adding it to a circle. This way, both you and your page’s visitors can get an at-a-glance summary of who is interacting with your page.
And last week, Google announced a series of new features tied to Hangouts, considered the site's "killer app." With more than 40 million users, Google+ is still way behind Facebook's 800 million-plus, but not doing badly for a social network that just opened its doors to all in September. What do you think of all the changes? Do they make Google+ too complicated (and too Facebook-like)? Let us know with your comments.
Related stories:
- New Google+ features power up Hangouts
- Google+ gets not-so-creepy 'Find My Face' feature
- Google opens up social network to businesses
- Google+ iPhone app gets search, photo improvements
- Big-time 'hangout': Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu on Google+
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