My New Favorite Social App for Photo Sharing (And a few other great features as well!)

About a month or so ago I was reading a blog by Scott Kelby touting Google+’s ease of use and its fantastic photo sharing features. I had heard about Google+ months ago when it was first announced and wasn’t very excited about it. How many more social networks did I really need in my life? But on Mr. Kelby’s recommendation I decided to sign up and see what G+ was all about.

After spending only an hour setting things up, finding some new friends to follow, and uploading some photos, I wished all my Facebook friends would move to G+! Not only is it great looking, it’s extremely easy to use and much more flexible than any other social networking site I’ve used. Kind of like going from a beaten up 1960 Volkswagen Beetle to a brand new Mercedes-Benz.

Google+ has made managing your friends much easier than other social networks. When you locate your friends or find someone you want to follow they appear on your “circles” page. (I’ll explain circles in a moment.)  There you will see all of your friends graphically displayed in nice sized profile boxes with their picture and some of their basic information.

 Though Facebook has recently added the ability to create groups of friends (I’m guessing as a response to the G+ solution), using Google’s “circles”  is much more convenient and logical. Circles are essentially groups of  people.  You can create circles based on friends, family, acquaintances, your motorcycle club, anything you want. You can have hundreds, even thousands, of people in any one circle and you can create as many circles as you want.

To place people into your circles is simple. As mentioned above, you’ll find all your friends on your circles page. You simply drag and drop your friends into as many of your circles as you like.

But the value of circles is realized when you want to post a message. After writing your post simply select which of your circles will see your message from a drop down menu. This is how you manage who sees or doesn’t your messages. You even have the option of letting your “extended circles” view your posts. Extended circles are the members of  circles your friends have created. There is also an option to block individuals or circles from seeing your content.

Want to share a circle with someone? No problem. Just send the it to them or post it as part of a message and whoever chooses to can now follow everyone in it. I’ve found this very handy when I want to share a circle I’ve created featuring photographers that are producing work I find interesting.

One thing that really annoys me about Facebook is the inability to fix a mistake in your post. You have to either leave it as is or delete and start over. Google+ added a  feature Facebook has yet to grasp: an “Edit” button! Click it, fix your spelling error or even completely rewrite your message, and save. The post is now just the way you intended it to be.

When it comes to pictures, whether you’re a pro or cell phone photographer, what’s really nice about Google+ is how it handles your photographs. Click on a large, easy to see thumbnail  and the image appears full-sized, crisp and clear, on a beautiful black background. Comments about the photo are can be seen on the right side of the screen. After the latest comment there’s a place to add your own. (They can also be added on the main page.) If that picture is part of an album you’ll see the rest of the photos in it along the bottom. A number in each photograph’s corner displays how many “+1″ ratings it’s received.(A +1 is equal to Facebook’s “Like.”)  Albums are also very easy to set up, allowing you to write clear, good-looking captions for each photo.

Yes, Facebook can now do many of the things Google+ introduced. Some Google+ features have been in Facebook all along. But its layout, ease of use, intuitive flow, and elegance far exceeds that of Facebook, Flickr, or anything else out there at the moment. Google+ was designed with all these features in mind so they would function together seamlessly and intuitively. As a total package they’ve raised the bar quite a bit and everyone else has a good amount of catching up to do.

You can check out my Google+ page by clicking here. I’ve just created a circle for my clients and anyone else who is interested in Charles Cotugno Photography which your more than welcome to be part of. To learn more about G+, which I highly recommend  you do,  just go to www.plus.google.com.(http://www.plus.google.com).

Charlie

 

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