The New Google Plus Interface
Surprise, surprise! On 11th April Google+ made a new announcement. Google+ now has more than 170 million users!
This is not the only reason why you should consider using Google+ for your freelancing business. Another very important reason is that Google+ profiles and pages can make an impact on the SEO of your website, at least in the personalized search results of Google.
The announcement also declared that Google+ will now run on a whole new interface that is a more “functional and flexible version of Google+.” The most striking feature of this new interface is that all the apps have been cornered down into the left margin, which can be moved up and down as per the requirements of the user. This means that the apps are no longer static as before.
But this is just the beginning.
The senior vice president of Google, Vic Gundotra wrote on Google’s official blog that:
We’ve also built the ribbon with the future in mind, giving us an obvious (and clutter-free) space for The Next Big Feature, and The Feature After That. So stay tuned.
Google+ is surely onto something big. Only time will tell, what? In this article we’ll discuss some of the new features of Google+. Understanding the big changes to Google+ will allow you to take advantage of them to promote your freelance business.
The Banner Image
Google Plus’s home page now hosts a large banner image. Its dimensions are 940 by 180 pixels.
Compare this to the new Facebook Timeline banner that is 851 by 315 pixels. Since Facebook rolled out its Timeline first, it suggests that Google Plus’s banner is inspired from Facebook’s.
But Google Plus is doing it a little differently. The new Google Plus allows two types of banner images. One is a continuous large photo and the other one is composed of five blocks. See the screen shot below of Chris Garret’s profile to understand what I mean.
The Dynamic Ribbon
I’ve said a few words about the ribbon earlier. Now let’s delve deeper.
This ribbon will accompany you throughout Google Plus. It’s sort of “stuck” to the left side screen of your monitor. This feature turns out to be very beneficial, as it saves time. You no longer need to go to the home page again and again, in case you want to use an app, instead you can just click on an app in the ribbon.
Some apps, like the Photos app, contain hover affect. This means when you hover over them, a new tab will open showing additional functions.
All apps of this ribbon, except for the Home app, are completely customizable. This means that you are free to choose which apps should be displayed on the ribbon and which should be contained within the “More” part. You can also set these apps in whatever order you like.
This should be clear if you compare the apps of the preceding two images. They both have different arrangements of apps in the dynamic ribbon.
The Hangouts Page
Hangout is a group video chat room where at the most nine people can do a group video chat.
In the previous Google Plus interface you had a limited number of ways to know which members of Google Plus were hanging out at the time when you were online. You could see occasional Hangout notifications from your circles, but nothing more than that.
Now Google Plus has created a whole new page dedicated to Hangouts.
On this page you will find:
- An always updated list of invitations from the people in your circles who are hanging out. Of course, the people of your circles are the most important and if they invite you for a hangout, the invite must occupy a position on this page.
- Access to every public and On Air hangout. An On Air hangout is a hangout which you can watch but not join. It is a sort of live video program that you can display from your webcam and is hosted on YouTube. What was YouTube’s slogan? Broadcast yourself!
- A rotating billboard of popular hangouts. At a given time thousands of people may be hanging out. While joining any hangout arbitrarily you may miss out on the popular ones. Click on the “Best of” link to see only the popular hangouts. See the screenshot below.
Larger Images and Videos
The new Google Plus will display larger sized photographs and videos in streams than what the old interface displayed.
Apparently this step is taken so that you don’t leave Google Plus to watch a video in a larger frame on another site. You can watch the large sized video on Google Plus itself.
What are your thoughts on these changes to Google Plus. How are you taking advantage of these new features?
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by sweetsweetMX.
Leave a Comment
Hola, I’m trying to use Google Plus but I find it a little hard to use at its full potential because people are used to Twitter and Facebook and many aren’t willing to use it.
Most of my contacts are IT friends and we are trying to expand our circles… But that’s all.
I do love the new look and congrats, this is the first article that doesn’t mention the white space in a despicable way.
Thanks for commenting Mr. Bucaro.
Yes, I too have seen some people who have just made their profiles on Google+ and left them on their own. Probably they are waiting for their number of followers to grow.
Perhaps my old article headed “8 features that make Google+ better than Facebook and Twitter” should convince your acquaintances to join Google+. Here’s the link – http://freelanceswitch.com/freelance-marketing/google-better/
You may want to send them the link of the article.
I crafted this article mainly towards freelancers and therefore I mentioned only those points that seemed to me to be useful for them. White space, in my opinion, is not that important for freelance businesses.
I haven’t yet took full advantage of this new interface but to be honest I really like Google+ and its new design.
If only regular users could understand how good this service is to get larger user base there so this service can really took of.
The thing what makes Google great is it’s 101% up-time and error-free experience while Twitter and Facebook can’t deliver speed and reliability like Google has.
Ya Twitter can be really slow sometimes. Google+ seems to correct all the fallacies of Facebook and Twitter. I think it is much better than the other two.
Let’s hope more people realize this and join Google+ so that we can have all our contacts there.
Thanks for commenting.
Be very careful about uploading your photos to this or any other social networking site. Why? Because of rights grabs, that’s why.
Simply put, these big companies can take your photos and use them any way they want without paying you anything. And it’s not like they’re poverty-stricken.
If you want to show off your photos, post a link to your own site. Don’t give Google free content. Or Facebook. Or Twitter. Or any of the rest.
I just love the drag and drop capabilities of all google’s services.
still wish I could change the colors a bit, I don’t like the warm grey accents.
Thanks Laurie for commenting.
Ya drag and drop makes things very easy.
Let’s wait for Google Plus’s “Next Big Thing”. Perhaps they may allow color changes in the future.
This site has a list of apps so you can customize your google plus profile page http://www.gplusavatarmaker.com/about.html including a bammer and profile picture maker http://www.gplusavatarmaker.com/GPlus-profile-picture-and-banner-maker.html
Yes google plus is very good especially for freelancers promoting their work!:)
Hi Nisha. Are you from my country, India? I was just a bit curious.
Thanks for commenting.
The ribbon can display more than 5 icons at a time. It depends on your screen resolution. My external monitor displays 8 icons (“more” icon inclusive).
Thanks Oladipo. Yes it was my fault. The number of apps that can be displayed out of the “More” section will depend on your screen resolution.
I’ve deleted the faulty sentence.
I made a tutorial on how to make Creative Google+ Cover Photo check it out at: http://robertsproductions.net/2012/photoshop-creative-google-cover-photo/
yup I am from India
Cool. It’s good to know that my countrymen are also reading and appreciating my work.
Great article about Google Plus new design. I think you missed to mention two more newly added feature. Actually it’s not new, but it now has some extra features. When you hover over any user’s name or profile image, it displays a small pop-up showing the full cover image and slightly bigger profile picture along with a line beneath them. Earlier, it used to show only profile picture.
And the second feature is, unlike Facebook, you can actually set animated gif images as your cover photos. This is something creative Google came with. I also found a website that has hundreds of cover photos (Both normal and gif images) to choose for Google Plus profile. Here’s the link : http://www.googlecovers.com 
Good luck for your blogging journey.
Hope you’ll find a creative cover photo for your profile through this website.
Hello Mr. Singh and thanks for commenting.
I have mentioned in the article that:
“In this article we’ll discuss some of the new features of Google+.” You see? “…SOME of the new features…”
I chose to write only those points that seemed most important to me for freelance businesses. Besides, Google+ has made a lot many changes to its interface and writing about all of them was impossible in a limited space. One has to pick and choose.
Great article about new google plus.
when google plus changed to this new look, first thing i wanted to do was to change my default cover picture.
i surfed many websites that are giving cover images for it, but most of those sites have same cover photos.
then, i decided to make my own cover and for that i began to search for the site that have ‘covermaker’ application.
http://www.googlecover.com/googlepluscovermaker
hope, this tool might helpful to those who want to create their own custom google plus cover