Google+ Announces 'What's Hot' Feature, Google Apps Account Integration (VIDEO)

Upstart social network Google+ on Thursday announced a few new features and introduced a change that users have been hankering after since the service launched over the summer.

A "What's Hot" feature will help users find and interact with popular content shared within Google+. According to a post on the Official Google Blog, this new tool will give users a glimpse outside their Circles and into the larger world of Google+ posts created by the 40 million-strong (and growing) user base.

A video posted to the Google Blog explains that the new feature will appear within users' vertical timelines, letting them click horizontally through popular content that might not otherwise appear there. You can also view hot Google+ posts in their very own "What's Hot" timeline, similar to Twitter's Top Tweets feed highlighting the microblog's most retweeted posts.

Check out how Google's new feature works in the video (below).

WATCH:

Google+ also announced an analytics tool, "Google+ Ripples," which lets users track how people are engaging with Google+ posts. Another fun tool, called the "Google+ Creative Kit," adds easy editing tools for photos uploaded to the network. (Visit the Google Blog to read more about these new features.)

And that's not all.

One of users' most frequent complaints about the social network was that only personal Gmail accounts could be used to sign up for the service. This policy excluded any user who accessed Gmail via a Google Apps account. But no longer.

As promised, Google+ has finally opened its doors to professionals, students and other Google Apps users. Note, however, that not all features of Google+ will work with Google Apps accounts, though Google promises it will "continue to add features" for Google Apps users.

From a post on the Google Enterprise Blog announcing the integration:

Starting now you can manually turn on Google+ for your organization. Once Google+ is turned on, your users will just need to sign up at google.com/+ to get started. For customers who use Google Apps for Business or the free version of Google Apps and who have chosen to automatically enable new services, Google+ will automatically become available to all of your users over the next several days.*

A number of universities around the world using Google Apps to power their email networks have already made Google+ available to students and faculty. For a full list of these 20+ institutions, visit the Google Enterprise Blog, and check out what Google+ features are available to higher education accounts.

For those who have already created a Google+ profile with a personal account, Google says there's a "migration tool" coming soon that will let Google+ users connect their existing Circles between their personal and Google Apps accounts.

"We expect this migration option to be ready in a few weeks, so if you’d like, you can go ahead and get started with your Apps account today and merge your connections once the tool is available," writes Google+ product manager Ronald Ho.

Google's social chief Vic Gundotra promised earlier this month at the Web 2.0 Expo that this change was imminent. He also promised several other changes were in the pipes already, some of which users have listed among Google+'s biggest shortcomings. Read more about what's to come from Google+, then take a look at users' biggest problems with Google+ (below).

Comments

[Kevin Gee]

05:59 PM on 11/27/2011

What Google fails to mention is the backlash they are beginning to receive from "What's Hot". It's an unwanted and un-needed "facebook'ish" tool hated by most and is the exact reason alot of people left Facebook to go to G+. Google would be wise to re-think this new crappy spam they are placing forcefully without even an option to opt-out or turn it off in users' preferences. Time will tell if people think its REALLY hot or not. :)

[Spike Page]

12:27 AM on 11/15/2011

I have been using G+ for about 2 months now, and find "What's Hot" to be annoying and potentially offensive. It cannot be "turned off" and there is no way to filter content. I'm not particularly squeamish about edgy jokes and political commentary, but I use G+ primarily to keep up with my friends. I don't want to get my news and political agendas from Google's vetted mouthpieces. I have legitimate news sources for that.

Keep your "What's hot"...and may as well keep your G+ for that matter. Your increasing encroachments on what I thought was content control tell me I was premature in recommending G+ to friends. I suspect my friends feel the same way, because when I stated this opinion ON FACEBOOK, I got lots of LIKES.

[CatherineAdenle]

04:28 AM on 10/28/2011

I am willing to deep a toe in, use G+ for a while and wait to see how effective it is compared to FB. However, I do wonder why Google invest time, energy and money in products and then cancel them - could it be because they say yes to a thousand things at once thereby making it difficult to perfect or focus on one main thing that could cement their credibility as a creative company? When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he said 'No' to a thousand things and made the company focus on iPod, the result of a combined goal is immeasurable and the ROI is tangible.

[Forgive and Share]

10:23 AM on 10/28/2011

Google's focus has been and still is, delivering free services to the public, paid for by advertising.

Google dominates this field but will not be if it does not take on the competition. FB and others are in the same business and are expanding their free services to challenge Google. Google has no option but to take them on.

If you try but fail, learn from your failure, innovate and try again. If you quit, you're the failure. Great people and great companies succeed by shear will, innovation and refusal to accept defeat.

If you are a small player with limited resources (as Apple once was) you have to limit your goals. Apple succeeds by innovation and a loyal following. The challenge to Apple today means it has to focus on many fronts including cloud computing and services, as come from behind Android is outselling it's main revenue generator, iPhone, by 2-1 and that gap is widening rapidly.

Fans aside, people would rather have free services and tolerate advertising or find free tools to block ads. It's a win-win for people and Google, as long as Google out-innovates the innovators on all fronts.

Free-service will always out-sell pay-for-service. It forces innovation and stiff competition, and benefits the public. Apple is now trying hard to ban or kill the competition.

[nishioka]

02:17 AM on 10/28/2011

> As promised, Google+ has finally opened its doors to professionals, students and other Google Apps users.

About 1/5 of my Facebook contacts got Google+ accounts over the summer to check the service out, and only one person stuck around full-time. 2 or 3 others post "oh hey, I still have a G+ account" messages on a very infrequent basis. The rest shuttered or abandoned their G+ accounts and went back to Facebook So as much as I was looking forward to being able to use G+ with my Apps account at one point... without anybody to really use the service with, I can't say I'm that excited about it now.

[Forgive and Share]

10:32 AM on 10/28/2011

It's hard to get a whole community migrate at once. This migration will be a slow process that will take generations.

I don't have FB, but I was told that you could integrate FB as a Circle in G+, so it not a one or other choice. You don't lose your FB circle, you gain G+ functionality. Can this be confirmed?

[LeftFoLyfe]

11:49 PM on 10/27/2011

I still don't get why they had to be all "faux exclusive" in the first place. It never felt like anything more than a gimmick, especially when they caved.

[tooncesrocks]

09:27 PM on 10/27/2011

...

crickets ...

[drunkarate]

09:01 PM on 10/27/2011

What's with the over annunciation in the video? Is the guy in the video auditioning for a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta?

[foxynoise]

06:44 PM on 10/27/2011

Oh thank heaven! I thought for sure they were going to announce that they had hired Meg Whitman who was announcing they would keep on keeping on!

[LifeWitness]

05:38 PM on 10/27/2011

Google should have enough funds to get real talent for their videos. This guy reminded me of Bobby Jindal giving the GOP response.

[mangafreak2128]

05:19 PM on 10/27/2011

I saw nothing wrong with the video.

[Vic22]

05:10 PM on 10/27/2011

Remember that time Google created a social network and invited no one, then everyone forgot about it?

[J0E1]

04:50 PM on 10/27/2011

How long until facebook copies this feature like they did circles?

[ewj1]

04:33 PM on 10/27/2011

Google the greatest marketing company in the world and one of the worse on user privicy and innovation. Nothing here is new or innovation but will get a lot of attention.