If you use Google Chat in Gmail, you’ll feel right at home because Google has included that same chat functionality in Google+, adding the ability to chat with your Circles as well. Simply search for a contact, or click on an available contact to begin a text, video, or audio chat.
Where Google+ really shines is the ability for multiple people (up to 10 people, to be exact) to chat simultaneous using video. There is one large video stream for the person who is talking, and smaller video streams below for everyone else. When Google+ detects a spike in the audio from a chat, their video gets placed in the large video stream. Pretty cool, huh?
Sparks is a way for communities of similar interest individuals to share items on Google+. It’s similar to Facebook pages, except these pages are designed specifically for different interests/topics, like Gardening, Sports, Cars, Movies, Android, Computers and more.
When you navigate to a group, you’ll see news items (presumably from Google News) about those topics. You can either read the news items, or you can Share the items with your Circles, adding your own comments.
Google has provided two ways of connecting to your Google+ account while on-the-go. The first is the native application that is only available right now to Android users. The application has some pretty nifty features, including the ability to upload your photos from your phone using the web interface on Google+.
If you’re not lucky (or is it unlucky?) enough to own an Android device, you can use the available mobile-friendly website that Google has created. It’s not too shabby and is available at m.google.com/plus.
Throughout your adventures on Google+, you may get lost in the wonderful world of social networking. When this happens, you can print out and use the Cheat Sheet provided by Mashable.
Google currently doesn’t support creating your own plus.google.com/username URL. However, a third party service will gladly help you overcome this shortfall by giving your profile the URL it needs. Just head to gplus.to to get started.
Follow this article's author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.
Jamie
July 17, 2011 at 8:49am
it's actually not out. It's still in beta and requires an invitation. I suspect they wanted a community established already before they take it public, and I guess it's working. ;)
bdsmith63
July 17, 2011 at 6:59am
So if Google+ is out now, when I go to join it I am told it is at full capacity! What?......
