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