Google Plus First Look: a tip-packed, comprehensive look at Google+

Table of Contents

Google Plus First Look: a tip-packed, comprehensive look at Google+

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Joining Plus and What to Do First

What is Plus?

Features of Plus

Why join Google Plus?

How to join Plus

Getting a Google Account

Getting a Plus Membership

Privacy concerns

Profiles

What we learned

2. Sorting Everyone into Circles

Tips on using Plus

How to post

Text emphasis

Editing and deleting

Other people's posts

Shortcuts

Sending a private message

Editing your posts

What's not to like about pluses?

The basics of Circles

Who's following whom?

Adding people to your Circles

Notifications

Creating new Circles

Circles for Friends, Acquaintances, and Family

Mastering circle maintenance

Sorting Circles

Adding people who've added you

Reordering Circles

Sorting members of a circle

Circle editing shortcuts

Private Circles

Following celebrities and others

What we learned

3. Hanging Out

What Are Hangouts?

Selecting and setting up a webcam

Starting your own Hangout

Joining existing Hangouts

Hanging out from YouTube

What we learned

4. Streaming

Changelog

How the Stream works

Controlling what we see

Posting and Targeting

Targeting

Posting your own stuff

Posting Other types of documents

Posting from the web

Archiving your posts

Posting from another website

What we learned

5. Sharing Media

Preparing photos for Plus

Uploading and captioning Photos

Adding more than one photo to posts

Posting photos from your phone

Using the Photos section

Preparing videos for Plus

Uploading and captioning videos

Uploading directly to Plus

Sharing a YouTube video

Using automatically uploaded videos from your phone

What we learned

6. Mobile and Games

Getting mobile access to Plus on phones or tablets

SMS only

Streaming

Photos

Circles

Messenger

Profile

Notifications

Settings

Games on Plus

What we learned

7. Promoting on Plus the Right Way

Netiquette

Considerate marketing is effective marketing

Content is king

A marketing secret

Maximizing article views

Driving visitors to your website

Business and organization accounts

Starting circle groups

Google+ pages

What we learned

Conclusion

A. Appendix

Third-party websites

Extensions

Index

Google Plus First Look: a tip-packed, comprehensive look at Google+

Google Plus First Look: a tip-packed, comprehensive look at Google+

Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: November 2011

Production Reference: 1181111

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-84968-534-4

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Artie Ng ( <artherng@yahoo.com.au> )

Credits

Author

Ralph Roberts

Reviewers

David Broschinsky

Amol Y. Datar

Acquisition Editor

Dilip Venkatesh

Development Editor

Shreerang Deshpande

Technical Editor

Llewellyn F. Rozario

Copy Editor

Neha Shetty

Project Coordinator

Joel Goveya

Proofreader

Samantha Lyon

Indexer

Rekha Nair

Production Coordinator

Arvindkumar Gupta

Aparna Bhagat

Cover Work

Arvindkumar Gupta

Aparna Bhagat

About the Author

Ralph Roberts is a decorated Vietnam veteran and worked with NASA during the Apollo moon program. He built his first personal computer in 1976 and has been writing about them, and on them, since his first published articleDown with Typewriters in 1978. He has written over 100 books along with thousands of articles and short stories. His best sellers include the first U.S. book on computer viruses (which resulted in several appearances on national TV) and Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola®, a cookbook that has been in continuous print for the past 17 years and sold half a million copies. He is also a video producer with over 100 DVD titles now for sale nationally on places such as Amazon.com. He has also produced hundreds of hours of video for local TV in the Western North Carolina area and sold scripts to Hollywood producers. Previously for Packt, Ralph wrote Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting and Google App Inventor. Ralph and his wife Pat live on a farm in the mountains of Western North Carolina with two horses.

Thanks to my wife, Pat, for her superior proofing.

To the wonderful people at Packt, especially Dilip Venkatesh, and my most astute and encouraging editor, Joel Goveya.

To all the kind folks on Google+ and all the new friends I am making there.

About the Reviewers

David Broschinsky has a passion for technology and helping individuals use technology to improve their lives. He has worked in the computer industry for over 20 years with a focus on user experience. He currently runs his own User Experience consultancy, Usable Patterns, in Salt Lake City, UT where he enjoys working with mature companies and small startups.

Amol Datar has worked for Courion IT Pvt. Ltd as a QA lead. He completed his MCS from Pune University. He is a cool person and loves to listen to the opinion of others before making an appropriate decision. He loves challenges in life and also appreciates like-minded people.

He's been having a great journey for more than 6 years in the IT industry.

He is a die-hard Manchester United (Manu-Red devils) fan, loves to watch cricket matches, be it domestic, club match or International cricket.

It has been excellent experience for him to work with companies such as Siemens Information Systems Ltd (SISL-Mumbai), UK—Royal Bank of Scotland (Onsite), Dell—Pune, Cybage software.

I'd like to thank my wife, Priya Datar, who has inspired me to take up book reviewing.

Also, my special thanks to Shreerang Deshpande, who has provided me the opportunity to review this book on Google Plus.

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Preface

In four years on Facebook, I gained 453 friends. In four months on Google+, I have 10,141 followers. In the course of this book, you'll learn everything I know about G+ and have a bunch of fun doing it!

At first glance, Google+ (or Plus, the terms are interchangeable) seems awfully familiar. You can make Posts, like on Facebook's Wall. The Stream—a continuous page of posts from your friends—looks like Facebook's News Feed. That little +1 button on Plus is much the same as Facebook's Like button (and perhaps where the name for Plus came from).

Here's what my Plus profile page looks like currently (as this book goes to press):

Points of similarity to FB and other social media networks do not end as described above. Early reviewers remind me of the classic poem about the blind men and the elephant. One took hold of its trunk and said an elephant is like a hose. Another felt its leg and said an elephant is mighty like a tree. And so forth.

About Plus, one writer says it's a Facebook killer, another that with the Plus Following feature it's more like Twitter than Twitter (but more powerful), and yet another compares it to the digital media haven|Tumblr, because of its ease in sharing photos and videos.

Truth is, Google+ is all this and a good deal more. It's a redesign of social and business contact management using the latest web techniques. And it has a lot going for it, but there is one bit of magic rising above the rest and causing so many of us to come running (over ten million in its first two weeks of limited availability). That magic is Circles!

Because many already see the genius of Google's real offering—Plus is a new beginning! A chance to reboot our social life and to better manage all those hundreds of friends on Facebook. We have absolutely no idea who these hundreds of friends are, but their posts clutter our News Feeds.

Circles give us the ability to organize all our contacts into groups. So instead of having a huge mass of friends (most of whom you have no idea who they are), you have incredibly more manageable groups such as the ones Plus starts you with—Friends, Acquaintances, Family, and Following (people whose posts you wish to follow, but not interact with, like on Twitter).

You can add all the additional Circles you like. One for each club you belong to, people you went to school with, another for those you work with—the possibilities are endless.

However, as already stated, there are many more attractions. This book:

Gives you an exciting but comprehensive first look at the features of Google+ and how to best use them.

Shows the best ways of rebooting your social networks using the power of Plus.

Displays numerous examples of what you use social networking for and how to do it in ways that work and do not offend.

Explores ways of promoting yourself, a product, your company, a cause, and so on. The right way, effectively and inoffensively.

And a lot more!

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Joining Plus and What to Do First. This chapter introduces that excitement and how you