This past week you may have seen or heard talk of a mysterious black bar appearing on top of Google.com. Well it wasn’t by accident. In fact it was a sign of something new to come from Google. What is it you ask? “Google+.” What is Google+? Google+ is a top-secret social project that Google has been working on for the past year. The reason for this new project is to create a new way we interact with our friends and family in an all-in-one online experience. Some key features of Google+ include Circles, Sparks, and Huddle. With Circles, you are able to organize your contacts into categories or ‘Groups’ and share and interact with people in those categories the way you do in the ‘real world.’ Sparks is another main feature with Google+. Sparks is more than just a “search engine.” With Sparks, you enter an interest you have and Google goes out and finds elements on the web that they think you’ll care about. These can be links to blog posts, videos, books — anything that Google searches for. Finally the last feature I will talk about is called “Huddle.” Huddle is essentially a group messaging app that works across Android, iPhone, and SMS to allow you to communicate with the people in certain Circles.
There are many more great features to come with Google+ and I’ve only mentioned a few. The project is still in beta but they are expecting to release it to the public soon. Right now is only phase one. You can sign up to beta test here.
