Google+ : Googles Social Networking Website (Install App For Android)

Yesterday Google launched a field trial (by invitation only) social network called the Google+ project . The home page of Google+ (pronounced as Google Plus) acts as launcher for the four main features: Circles, Stream, Huddle and Photos.

Google+ Circles:
Circles lets you share things within a select group of people. Google+ Circles is an attempt to address that challenge. The HTML5 system allows users to drag-and-drop their friends into different social circles for friends, family, classmates, co-workers and other custom groups. Users can drag groups of friends in and out of these circles.

Google+ Stream and Sparks:

It’s much like the Facebook News Feed, allowing users to share photos, videos, links or their location with friends. Stream gives you a live timeline of updates from your friends, not unlike what Facebook's news feed does. 

Sparks is recommendations of things you like to do, your hobbies, areas of interest and things you like. The system is algorithmic — it relies on information from other Google products (e.g. Google Search) as well as what is being shared via Google+ and through +1 buttons.Google+ Sparks, is a collection of articles, videos, photos and other content grouped by interest. For example, the “Movies” spark will have a listing of recent and relevant content for that topic.

Huddle:
Huddle is like GroupMe or any group chat service, where you can create groups on the fly and talk amongst yourselves to plan out a night, a vacation, etc. Huddle will be one of the features of the social network that Google is trying to build, where you can send out text messages to your chosen “Circle” of friends. In their own words:

"Texting is great, but not when you’re trying to get six different people to decide on a movie. Huddle turns all those different conversations into one simple group chat, so everyone gets on the same page all at once."

Google+ Hangouts and Photos:
“Hangouts” is new group chat feature . In this feature you can directly ask a friend to join a group chat, users instead click “start a hangout” and they’re instantly in a video chatroom alone. At the same time, a message goes out to their social circles, letting them know that their friend is “hanging out.” The result, Google has found in internal testing, is that friends quickly join.

Photos is really great as it has an 'Instant Upload' feature that can automatically send your pictures and videos to the cloud for super easy sharing.

How to Get Google+ invitation:

You can sign up over here for Google+ invitation.


Application For Android:

You have to have a Google+ for the app to work and it's only currently on Android. You can install it from here. An iOS version is supposedly coming.