What is Google+?
Google+ is Google’s own social networking site which is setup to directly compete with Facebook, the biggest social networking site in the world. Google has been known as the search engine of choice when browsing through the internet, but has continuously explored other options to expand its online presence and provide more services for the online community. Google+ is officially named “The Google+ Project” and this is the latest social media product offered by Google.

With Google+, Google aims to integrate its existing line of products to create a robust and complete social media site. GMail is the main product to be integrated to the Google+ project and it is through this product that users will be able to join the social community in Google. A GMail email account is what is basically required for a user to be able to login to his/her Google+ account. Picasa is Google’s photo-organizing software and it’s also another product to be incorporated to the social media site. The very popular Google Maps will also be included in the Google+ community to allow users to easily check locations of various contacts.

Much like Facebook, Google+ also features some sort of news page and they call it the “Stream”. On the Stream will be the status updates of friends, family, and other contacts. Part of the Stream is the “Circles” features which basically allow users to make specific groups or “circles” between friends and family. This feature especially helps if users want to discuss a certain concern with only a small group of friends and not with every contact. Video calling and conferencing is also a big feature of Google+ and this is labeled as the “Hangouts” feature. Google+ also allows group chatting with the “Huddle” feature. And the best thing about ‘Huddle’ is that this feature can be used using mobile phones. All these translate to being able to connect with friends while on the go.