Google Plus (or Google+) is a brand-new social media network using all the latest in web software.

Google is one of the giants on the Internet, dominant in search engines and other areas, but was never the type of all-inclusive social media that Plus aims to be (which has been most recently ruled by Facebook). Many members, as well as myself, feel Plus is a game changer.

Plus is not Google's first attempt at social networking (we'll be nice and not mention Buzz and Wave). However, they have had successes. Their orkut network, popular in Europe, has over 15 million members. And, of course, YouTube—the master of video sites—is Google's.

For those of us keeping score at home, ebizmba.com (a business-oriented site), listed in the top fifteen social media networks for August, 2011. Not surprisingly, Facebook (with over 700 million users) was the leader. Twitter was second. Myspace, once the king, has fallen to fourth.

Google Plus—which only started in June, 2011, and is still in an early growth stage—was already up to 6th with over 32 million members as I started this book. Now it's around 50 million. And those members have posted over a billion items! I've added a fair share of that myself.

So, yes, Plus looks like it's very popular and can continue its fast growth (that's pretty much an understatement, I believe). Here's what the entry page looks like (https://plus.google.com):

We'll discuss the procedure for joining Plus in just a moment. As we prep this book for publication, Plus is now open for the public, so invitations (as was true during the beta programs) are no longer required. Just join. It's completely free.

Plus provides several advantages that ensure rapid growth aside from all the new designs and powerful web software. Not least of which is its close integration with other Google products, especially Gmail.

Gmail is Google's free e-mail service that already has over 200 million users worldwide. Plus runs (at least partially) on top of the Gmail system. When I check my Gmail, in the upper-right corner it tells me how many Plus notifications are waiting for me, as shown in the following screenshot. A click opens those up.

I also get notifications in e-mails, as shown in the following screenshot:

Additionally, there's a link to your Plus page in the upper-left corner of Gmail:

The close integration of Google+ with Gmail (and other Google products, as we see in this book) makes using Plus easier and more powerful. There are also apps for the popular type of smartphones (such as My Droid 2) that let us keep track and interact no matter where we might be.

Back to what Plus is. Social media runs the gamut from terse 140-character messages like Twitter to the vastness of Facebook (current leader after supplanting MySpace and now, obviously, a target in its own right).

Like Facebook, Google+ falls more toward the"do everything for you" end. Unlike Facebook, Plus is not stuck with a lot of legacy code. Plus is (as already stated) an up-to-date, innovative, and new social network built from the ground up and designed for both great power and ease-of-use.

Features of Plus

We introduced some of the major features in the Preface and showed them in the illustration of the main Plus entry screen (the first image in this chapter). However, let's review the major ones:

• Circles: The hot new concept that, by itself, puts Plus above all other social media networks. By the use of Circles (you can have as many as you like), you can categorize friends, family, acquaintances, people at work, schoolmates, members of the hiking club, or any of the many other groupings in your life. Takes all the confusion out of social interaction! We'll run around in ... err... circles in the next chapter. The introduction to Circles from the Plus website is shown in the following screenshot:

• Stream: A newsfeed that is somewhat similar to Facebook's, but much more controllable because you can select which circle to see posts from, and so on.

• Hangouts: A video chat service where, using a cheap USB camera, you can both see and talk to your friends. The following screenshot shows how Plus introduces it on the Plus site:

• Chat : Standard text chats and a feature called Messenger that allows us to gather several friends together for a group chat from our smartphones.

There are other nice features, all of which we'll master in this book. For example, photos and videos (both yours and of the people in your circles post) are easy to upload and share.

If you have a smartphone with the Google Plus app on it (free from the Plus site), photos on the phone automatically upload to your private photo albums. Share what you wish, when you wish. No one else can see them until you do. This feature is called Instant Upload. For those concerned with privacy and if this action bothers them, I'll show you how to turn that feature off later in the book (it's in the settings of the official Google+ app).

Additional features are under development, such as Games and Questions. If they appear before I've finished this book, then we will see what they do.

Breaking news: Wow, the wait for Games was not all that long, they are here now! Literally overnight from when I wrote the preceding paragraph. We'll cover Games later in this book:

The Games icon is already in place now on the Google+ control bar, as shown in the following screenshot:

Furthermore, later in this book is a chapter on how to promote on Plus. Promotion is a very exciting and important concept. We all have something we want others to know, whether it is only the fact that we are jolly good fellows and fun to know or that we make our living by selling products, or services, or by pushing for a good cause—for whatever reason, promotion is important and Plus makes it easy.

Often when we meet someone new, one of the first questions they ask is"What do you do for a living?" Soon enough, you might answer,"I post stuff on Google Plus."

The following is an example where I share this breaking news with all the people who have me in their circles to make sure they know I'm writing a book about Plus (which will result, we would hope) in increased book sales.

This is how I make my living, got to keep my computers fed. By the way, thank you for buying this book, truly appreciated.

Continuing, Vic Gundotra—Senior Vice President for Social at Google—in an interview published by Mashable (mashable.com) says Google+ is"designed to be an improvement to all of Google."

Vic goes on to add that this is why the Google's navigation bar on the main Google search page (as shown in the following screenshot) now shows a link to Plus and any notifications you might have waiting (a white number in a small red box, just click on it).

Now we're beginning to get a feeling of what Plus is (and there will be much more coming). The next question becomes why would we want to join?