Scott McNulty - The Google+ Guide: Circles, Photos, and Hangouts

Circles, Photos, Hangouts, and More

Scott McNulty

The Google+ Guide: Circles, Photos, Hangouts, and More
Scott McNulty

Published by Peachpit Press. For information on Peachpit Press books, contact:

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Peachpit Press is a division of Pearson Education.
Copyright 2012 by Scott McNulty

Executive editor: Clifford Colby
Editor: Kathy Simpson
Production editors: Maureen Forys and Kim Wimpsett, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Compositor: James D. Kramer, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Indexer: Valerie Haynes Perry
Cover and interior design: Mimi Heft

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The information in this book is distributed on an As Is basis without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.

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ISBN-13 9780321814098
ISBN-10 0321814096

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in the United States of America

To Marisa, for making sure I dont do all my socializing via the Internet.

Scott McNulty has been known to Google himself from time to time. He is also an unabashed early adopter and technology enthusiast, with an undeniable urge to share his excitement about technology with the world.

Scott lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marisa. By day he works at the The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and by night he blogs about whatever strikes his fancy at http://blog.blankbaby.com. He has also been known to tweet once or twice under the handle @blankbaby.

Once again, Im thankful to all the talented people without whom this book would not exist. Cliff Colby talked me into writing the book, and I thank him for that. Kathy Simpson once again had the unenviable task of taking my scribblings and making them human-readable, and she did a stellar job, as always. Thanks to Maureen Forys, Kim Wimpsett, and Mimi Heft, who made this book look as great as it does. And thanks to Valerie Haynes Perry for indexing the heck out of it.

This book was a team effort; any errors in the text, however, are mine alone.

Google+ is the newest kid on the social-networking blocka service that allows you to post your thoughts, photos, videos, and more to your stream (see ). People who follow you on Google+ can see what youve posted on your stream and share it with their followers.

Now, you may be thinking, I thought we had enough social networks to keep up with already: Twitter, Facebook, even MySpace. Why add another? Thats a very good question, and Im sure that many smart people at Google asked the same question before they launched Google+. How can I be so sure? Because it all that careful thought shows when youre using Google+.

Google+ offers a bevy of features that allow you to share different things with different people. That final bit is the interesting part: Google+ makes it downright simple to share particular things with only certain people.

I clearly remember the day when Facebook changed for me forever: A friend request from my mother appeared in my inbox. Now, I love my mother, and I couldnt refuse to be her friend (that might have resulted in some awkward Thanksgiving meals), but when your mom is your friend on Facebook, that fact affects the way you use the service. The same can be said when your boss and co-workers friend you on Facebook.

Facebook is invested in your sharing things with the widest audience possible, as the default privacy settings reflect. Lately, Facebook has gotten better about allowing you to choose who can see what, but Google+ was designed with choice in mind. Google+ is the first social network to embrace the idea that people have several groups of people in their lives: relatives, friends, co-workers, the Tuesday-night poker group, and so on. The list is incredibly different from person to person. Isnt it odd, then, that most social networks assume that you want to share the same things across all those groups? Google+ doesnt.

In the following sections, I take a quick look at the features this book covers to give you an idea of what Google+ has to offer.

The cornerstone of your Google+ experience is circles, which group people in your Google+ network. You can share whatever you post to Google+ with any number of your circles, and you can create your own custom circles.

Google+ also has some default circles:

Friends

Family

Acquaintances

Following

I dive into circles in .

Google+ makes sharing things with other folks on Google+ easy. It makes talking to them very easy as well. You can start a video conference call, or hangout, by clicking a button. Better yet, you can invite people from any of your circles to join you in your hangout. If you arent into the idea of video/audio conferencing, hangouts also support group chat so that you can type your thoughts.

Hangouts, and some uses for them, are covered in .

The builders of any new social network would be crazy to ignore the explosive growth of mobile devices, so Google+ has a couple of features that are designed to be used only with mobile devices. Messenger, the most prominent of the mobile-only features, is a text-messaging service of sortswithout the fees.

You can message with anyone in your circles. As long as both you and your contact have the Google+ app on your devices (iOS or Android), you can send text and pictures to each other.

I cover this feature in .

Google+ allows you to share that funny cat picture you found on the Internet. Its also become something of a go-to service where photographers can show off their work to their peers and get feedback, thanks to Google+s robust commenting and 1+ system (the Google+ analogue to Facebooks Like).

You can not only share individual pictures, but also create entire albums of photos and share them with any and all of your circles. Only the people with whom youve shared the photos can comment on them.

Creating, sharing, and managing photo albums on Google+ are covered in .

The preceding four features would make a pretty good social network all by themselves, but Google didnt stop there. Here are some more features that arent integral to the Google+ experience at the moment but that have growth potential: