Google Plus is also known as Google+, is a social networking platform from Google that was launched as a competitor to Facebook. Your Google account is enough to activate Google+. It can import contacts from your account and assign them to lists which it calls as circles. Post that you can create your own list of circles based on your area of interest. There are many features that came along with it like the Circles, Huddle, Sparks, and Hangouts. Sparks and Huddle were eliminated by Google. It also has existing features like Picassa which is a platform for saving and sharing pictures.

Features of Google plus

Circles: It is a way to set up customized social circles based on personal interests. Unlike other social media platforms where all the updates are shared with all the people in your contacts, it will enable you to share things with smaller groups. For example, if a comment on another user’s post on Facebook can be seen by friends of friends and also commented upon, the same does not happen in Google+, the post is visible only to people in the circle. If you want your feeds to be visible to everyone and also allow users to comment on it, there are settings that can make it possible.

Google photos: This is the most popular feature of Google+ as photos can be uploaded instantly from Android based camera phones. Despite its best-to-offer editing tools, this feature was separated from Google plus but it can still be used as an individual product.

Hangouts: This is a messaging platform for both video and instant messages. It can be used on computers / laptops as well as mobiles. It can be used for group chats (both text and video) where a maximum of 10 users can hangout together. It can also broadcast to YouTube publicly.

Check-ins: Similar to Facebook location check-ins, Google+ also has this feature but even without specifically checking in, the Google plus location sharing will show the location.

Benefits of Google Plus
1.You can organize and categorize contacts and assign them to ‘circles’
2. Sharing or message or posts with a set of people is easier as ‘circles’ feature offers more flexibility.
3. The circles you have created is private and others cannot see the name of the Circle you have assigned the contact to or know the other people who are a part of it.
4. Google+ addresses can be personalized.

Google+ was launched with much fanfare with over 10 million users using it in the first few weeks. But despite the initial thrust, it was still unable to compete with Facebook. Slowly, sharing option for G+ began to fade from news, articles, and posts and is now dying a slow death. Experts believe that not opening Google+ testing to out of company users was the reason behind the failure of this product. Though not a very popular social network, it still is a useful product and worth installing as it offers many good features.