Google’s Social Media Service Is Getting An Update

In 2013 to 2014, Google realized that their social media service, Google+ was not going to be taking down Facebook any time soon. Google+ had a great number of dedicated users but the company soon realized that they were not using the service as much for stand-alone discussions as much as they were using it for sharing.

As a sound tactical decision, they decided to permanently integrate the service into the Google platform of overall services. Any person with a Google account also became a Google+ user, although the majority remained inactive.

Since that time, the Google+ teams made changes to the social media service in an attempts to differentiate it from Facebook and make it into a content sharing platform first and foremost.

However, Google+ maintained all its initial functionalities. The developer teams just added the changes as features.

Because Google initially designed Plus with an accent based on group communication and sharing rather than general sharing, all those design features proved to be very useful for work groups and communities.

Presently Google+ sees use as a content sharing platform or as an official conversation hub but rarely as both in the same time.

While most of the online world tends to forget that the social media service actually exists, its dev teams continue to work hard and add more and more features. Since 2013, if a person were to login to Google+ only once per year, they would see an almost entirely different interface each time.

The Little Social Media Service That Could

First of all, Google+ users will not be able to opt out from any of the interface changes which will be implemented. The new interface continues to focus mainly on Collections and Communities and distances Plus from other social media services such as Facebook.

Comments will finally have full photo and link support, bringing conversations in-line with other popular services.

Managing account activity on Google+ will be easier with a centralized notifications center.

Community owners and moderators can now pre-approve posts and comments. This feature works really well with the other changes because it can prevent inappropriate, abusive, adult, hateful, or spammy content from cluttering up a conversation.

To better cater to  work-exclusive communities, Google+ will finally become a core Google for Work service.

This new batch of features to Google’s social media service will complement the features brought to Collection and Communities in November 2015. Ever since those changes were set into place, Google recorded an average of 1.6 million daily Community joins.

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