What is Google+?

Google+, a social network operated by Google, launched on 28 June 2011, with integrations across a number of Google products.

Available as a Web site and on mobile devices, many sources have declared it to be Google's biggest attempt to rival the social network Facebook, which has over 800 million users.

Google+ focuses on targeted sharing within subsections of your social group, called Circles. Circles are small groups of people that you can share to, each with names like friends, family, classmates, co-workers or other user created custom names; 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 allow users to hide the users in their circles as well as who have them in their circle. Organisation is done through a drag-and-drop interface. This system replaces the typical 'friend's list' function used by sites such as Facebook.

Also within Google+, Google has created a section specifically for viewing, management and editing multimedia. The photo tab takes a user to all of the photos he or she has shared, as well as the ones they are tagged in. Google+ includes an image editor, privacy options and sharing features and introduces new services identified as Circles, Hangouts and Sparks.

Another feature that's widely discussed is “Hangouts”, used to facilitate group video chat. Instead of directly asking a friend to join a group chat, users instead click “start a hangout” and they're immediately in a video chat room. At the same time, a message goes out to their social circles, letting them know that their friend is “hanging out”. Friends can then join the hangout as long as they have been placed in a circle that was invited by the person who created the Hangout.

Sparks is a front-end to Google Search, enabling users to identify topics they might be interested in sharing with others. "Featured interests" sparks are also available, based on topics others worldwide are finding interesting. Sparks helps to keep users informed of the latest updates on the topics of their interest.

In a nutshell, Google+ makes connecting on the Web more like connecting in the real world. Share your thoughts, links and photos with the right circles. Use easy, spontaneous video chat to strike up conversations with as many as nine people at once. Get everyone on the same page with fast, simple group chat.

Moreover, Google+ has made business marketing easier by allowing users to create pages for local businesses, products, brands and other things. Any user can create a page, but the terms of service state that only someone who has authority over the business can own or manage the page. That means small business owners can take control of their own Google+ pages and interact directly with potential customers.

Google+ doesn't provide a lot of referral traffic at this point, but it does have other benefits. It can allow a small business to strengthen relationships with a key demographic, and there may also be SEO implications. Google has been quiet on the subject of how it uses social media signals in search rankings, but there are strong indications that Google+ does play some role. According to Forbes, it is very likely that the behaviour of users on Google+ has an impact on search results.

In order to take full advantage of sharing on Google, you must create a publicly visible Google profile, which may include your name and photo - something that's been operational since Google+ launched. Google's new privacy policy went into effect not too long ago, with a strong emphasis on mobile and cross-platform sharing.

“By understanding your preferences we can ensure that we give you the search results that you're looking for, and by analysing the search logs of millions of users in aggregate, we can continually improve our search algorithm, develop new features, keep our systems secure and even predict the next flu outbreak,” the search giant writes on Good to Know, its Web site explaining privacy and the policy.

Google goes on to explain “the new policy doesn't change any existing privacy settings or how any personal information is shared outside of Google. We aren't collecting any new or additional information about users. We won't be selling your personal data. And we will continue to employ industry-leading security to keep your information safe.”

According to Joseph Smarr, technical lead on the Google+ team, Google+ is a typical Google Web application: it uses Java servlets for the server code and JavaScript for the browser-side of the UI, largely built with Google's Closure framework, including the JavaScript compiler and the template system. They use the HTML5 History API to maintain good looking URLs in modern browsers despite it being an AJAX app. To achieve fast response times Google often renders the Closure templates on the server-side to render it before any JavaScript is loaded; then the JavaScript finds the right DOM nodes, hooks up event handlers etc. The back-ends are built mostly on top of BigTable and Colossus/GFS, and other common Google technologies such as MapReduce.