Google Plus was a social media platform founded by Google in 2011. Google Plus was created to rival other social platforms such as Tumblr and Facebook. Google Plus was seen as very similar to microblogging platforms like Tumblr since you were able to post text, photos and videos. Google Plus was available to everyone with a Google account however it never really took off to the extent of other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. In 2012, Google Plus had a huge overhaul where new features were added to increase the use off the app. The users of Google Plus were overwhelmingly male when the app was still running with around 60% of all users identifying as male. Due to its unpopularity online, Google Plus was shut down in 2019 and was replaced by the platform Google Currents, however in this article, we will just be discussing Google Plus.
Google Plus, despite not having the popularity of other social media platforms, has many different key benefits and features that were unique to the platform that gave it a slight edge over competitors. First of all, to sign up, you had to have a standard Google account and if you already had one, you could pretty much sign up in one step. This made the platform extremely easy to use in comparison to other social media sites as they usually had lengthier sign-up processes. Just like Facebook and Twitter, the home page of Google Plus was made up of other people’s content that you could interact with (you could +1 a post which was the equivalent of a “Like” on Facebook or Twitter and you could also comment and share depending on the privacy setting of the user). However, a rather unique aspect of Google Plus was that you could categorise your friends list into “circles”. You were able to choose whether the people you added were either “Friends” or “Acquaintances” and could control what content of yours that they were able to view. You could also make your own personalised circles and have even more control over who is able to see your content. Circles are private and only you are able to view what you have named your circles and who is in them.
There were other features of Google Plus including the ability to use the Hangouts section. On Hangouts, you can call your friends as well as video call your friends. Hangouts is still a feature available on Google and was used a lot during the CoVid-19 pandemic last year when schooling was being done online. It is a completely free service to use, hence its popularity. In addition, on Google Plus, you could upload photos to your “Stream” via the “Photos” service. Again, Google Photos is still available as of right now however it is more of a storage service now. Google Plus was available via a web browser on desktop devices or via an app on mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets. The app was available on both Apple and Android app stores. It was also possible to customise a Google Plus account.
