Image by Bruce Clay, Inc via Flickr

In July 2011, Google Plus made its introduction to the world. Still in Beta, Google account holders were able to join this new social networking site and begin building their contacts and interacting with others. People that do not have a Google account, like Gmail, need to be invited to join from an existing member.

Circles

The function that people like the best is the circles. Users can designate different friends into circles, or groups with some type of similarity. For instance, you can place all your family members into one circle, co-workers in another circle, and classmates in yet a different circle. This allows users to easily pick who they share their content with. If you are posting about going to a family reunion, you may not want to share that with your co-workers, so you’d only choose to have the people in your family circle see that status update.

The Hangout

This is another cool feature of Google Plus where you can gather with up to 12 of your friends and hold a webcam chat and see each other while you hangout over long distances. I can see it as the perfect way for freelancers to get together for face to face meetings, no matter where they are in the world. It is a chance for long-distance friends to see each other in actual motion, not just reading their posts and seeing still images. People that travel can hangout with family or friends while they are away using the Hangout function on Google Plus.

So far, Google Plus looks fabulous, and actually better than Facebook. However, people have a lot invested in Facebook, with hundreds of pictures and friends, it will be interesting to see if people completely drop Facebook to use Google Plus, or if people will use both social networking sites.