Google+ Intro

Hey guys! By now, you must have heard about Google+. Its a social networking site which is gonna prove as the biggest rival to Facebook, according to a news by The New York Times. It includes a lot of features, some of which are given below:
Many features of Google+ are similar to those of other social networking sites such as Facebook. The way Google+ displays notifications, unread notifications, and links to posts is also similar to Facebook Notifications.

• "Circles" enables users to organize contacts into groups for sharing, across various Google products and services. Although other users can view a list of people in a user's collection of circles, they cannot view the names of those circles. The privacy settings also allows users to hide the users in their circles as well as who has them in their circle. Organization is done through a drag-and-drop interface. This system replaces the typical friends list function used by sites such as Facebook.
• "Hangouts" are places used to facilitate group video chat (with a maximum of 10 people participating in a single Hangout at any point of time). However, anyone on the web could potentially join the 'Hangout' if they happen to possess the unique URL of the Hangout.
• "Huddle" is a feature available to Android, iPhone, and SMS devices for communicating through instant messaging within circles.
• "Instant Upload" is specific to Android mobile devices; it stores photos or video in a private album for sharing later.
• "Sparks" is a front-end to Google Search, enabling user to identify topics they might be interested in sharing with others; "featured interests" sparks are also available, based on topics others globally are finding interesting^.
• In the "Stream," users see updates from those in their circles, updates similar to Facebook's news feed. The input box allows users to enter a status update or use icons to upload and share photo and videos. The Stream can be filtered to show only posts from specific Circles.
• The "+1" button is similar to the 'Like' button on Facebook.
• Unlike Twitter and Facebook there is not yet an API that enables software developers to interact with Google Plus programmatically.

Still wanna know more? Check out my friend, Tharun Venkatesh's post about it. Click here