Nonplussed by Google Plus?
If you’ve been less than impressed with Google Plus, you’re not alone. I was an early adopter, and while I share stuff once in a while, I honestly don’t use it all that often because I find it to be very inefficient.
Similar to Facebook, I can log in and browse / participate in my “circles” but for me, what’s really lacking in Google Plus has been the ability to instantly share your comment from a web page, just as you would with Twitter.
If you’re reading a post or article, you’ll often see a “Tweet This” button, or a Facebook “Like” icon, that lets you not only “vote”, but comment & share instantly with your followers and friends. Google plus didn’t work like that.
Instead, the way it works now is that pressing the +1 button simply “casts your vote” publicly, which is seen by virtually no one, aside from in the search results. There, if someone you know has pressed the +1 button for a page, that’s the only place you would see that they’ve “recommended” it, unless you look at their +1 profile page.
If you want to actually “share” a page, you still have to copy and paste the url into a “share” box which appears in the top right of your browser window only while you’re on certain Google properties.
That’s changing now
Last week Google announced that they have made an improvement to the platform, and in my opinion it’s about time. In fact, if I were Google, I probably would of made sure it was available from the beginning – I’ve found it far too difficult and tedious to actually be able to +1 something and share with your circles.
Here’s a short video from Google showing how it works –
There’s supposedly nothing you need to do in order to make this improved functionality happen for you, either as a user or a site owner, and it will begin working that way soon. The funtionality is being “turned on” for just one Google Plus user at a time, (via @rustybrick comment).
There’s no way to know if you have been “turned on” until you click the +1 button, and at that point you’ll either get the new interface, or you won’t. Why not try it for yourself by hitting the +1 button on the left? 