What is 'Google Plus'? The social layer explained! | Friends Company| M.A.Rehman

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• published: 08 May 2016
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Google+ is something of a black sheep in the world of social media. Even as a young network of three years that has grown faster than many of the current leaders, Google+ has been disparaged and shunned by much of the public for the moves Google has made with it. Google+ has long required users to use their real name as their screen name, a move which was made even more unpopular when Google announced that YouTube comments would take place through Google+. That requirement is now gone, much to the delight of SamsungKnight1134. Recently, the departure of the public face of Google+, Vic Gundotra, led many to call the network dead. These naysayers claim Google+ doesn't work, it doesn't make sense, and that it's a ghost town. I'm here to tell you that they're wrong. It is alive, it absolutely works, and you should almost definitely use it. How do I know? Google+ has been my primary blogging platform since the beginning, and my primary social platform for over a year. Every week I'd meet a few more people who liked my writing and wanted to talk tech. I'd share my posts in any community I dared in the hopes that more established writers could help guide my writing, shape it for the better. With a timely post on rooting, I managed to catch the eye of some very established writers, and they decided to take a chance on me here at Android Central. So to me, Google+ is a little more than just a social network, and I'd like to help share its bounty with you. Google+ is the company's fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz (launched 2010, retired in 2011), Google Friend Connect (launched 2008, retired by March 1, 2012), and Orkut (launched in 2004, as of 2013 operated entirely by subsidiary Google Brazil – retired in September 2014[4]). Google+ launched in June 2011. Features included the ability to post photos and status updates to the stream or interest based communities, group different types of relationships (rather than simply "friends") into Circles, a multi-person instant messaging, text and video chat called Hangouts, events, location tagging, and the ability to edit and upload photos to private cloud-based albums.[5][6] Growth, engagement[edit] Assessments of Google+ growth have varied widely because Google first defined the service as a social network,[5] then later as "a social layer across all of Google's services", allowing them to share a user's identity and interests.[7] According to Ars Technica, Google+ signups were "often just an incidental byproduct of signing up for other Google services."[8][9][10] Consequently, the reported number of active users on Google+ grew significantly, but the average time those users spent on the site was a small fraction of that on comparable social media services. In 2011 Google+ reached 10 million users just two weeks after the launch.[11] In a month, it reached 25 million.[12] In October 2011, the service reached 40 million users, according to Larry Page.[13] Based on ComScore, the biggest market was the United States followed by India.[14] By the end of the year Google+ had 90 million users.[15] In October 2013, approximately 540 million monthly active users made use of the social layer by interacting with Google+'s enhanced properties, like Gmail, +1 button, and YouTube comments.[16] Some 300 million monthly active users participated in the social network by interacting with the Google+ social networking stream.[17][18][19] But user engagement on Google+ was low compared with its competitors. ComScore estimated that users averaged just 3.3 minutes on the site in January 2012, versus 7.5 hours for Facebook.[20][21] In March 2013, average time spent on the site remained low: roughly 7 minutes, according to Nielsen, not including traffic via apps.[22] In February 2014, The New York Times likened Google+ to a ghost town, citing Google stats of 540 million "monthly active users", but noting that almost half don't visit the site. The company replied that the significance of Google+ was less as a Facebook competitor than as a means of gathering and connecting user information from Google's various services.[23] Changes in management, product direction[edit] In April 2014, Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, departed the company[24] with management responsibility going to David Besbris. By March 2015, Google executive Bradley Horowitz, who had co-founded Google Plus with Gundotra, had replaced Besbris, becoming vice president of streams, photos, and sharing.[25]