Since Google’s announcement and release of the new interface for Google+ on 11th of April, we’ve been playing around with some of their adjustments. It is now time for us to give you an in-depth-y overview of what we believe this change means to you on a personal and business level.
First off we notice a change in the Navigation of the platform, moving from a static top-menu to a side-menu on the left that users can personalise using drag-and-drop. A nice little addition to make the network feel more personal. Hovering over certain apps also launches a set of quick action links, speeding up the input of content into the platform.
The next big change is the addition of Explore tab, that allows you to “Find out what’s new and interesting on Google+“. This tab allows for social discovery in a twitter-esque ‘trending topics’ manner, whilst also displaying the ‘hottest’ content around the network. This is valuable to users who had previously found the network limited in usefulness, and grew bored of G+ quickly. The benefit to businesses is the ability to start distributing social content more efficiently through the online network.
Profiles have been updated to allow for a more clear personal story and with the addition of a timeline-like cover-photo, profiles now feel more personal and unique, whilst avoiding the mistakes we all remember from MySpace. This allows users and brands to give a clearer picture of their brand.
Photo sharing also received a beautiful touch-up, allowing for the display of larger and more interactive image-based posts, benefiting both the personal user and the business-minded user.
Hangouts also got a new home, in their own tab, hopefully spreading the popularity of multi-person webcam conversations between people, friends and businesses.
Here’s the official video from Google:
We think that although there are no breakthrough new features, this will bring some much-needed socially-fluid content to Google’s social network. What do you think?