

Google+: Communities and photos - ma2xd
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/google-communities-and-photos.html

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timothya
Nice to see a groups-like feature make it to Google+ at last.

One of the best features of G+ has always been communicating with people you
don't know in person, and I think this will facilitate that more around common
interests. I can also see this as being useful for groups of friends or family
who always want to post content to each other.

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shuw
I don't know if Google announced this earlier, but this post just released
more granular active (I assume monthly) user numbers for G+ than I've seen:

"More than 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across
Google (+1'ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with
friends in Search...), and 135 million are active in just the stream."

~~~
eungyu
I thought it was very odd that Google inserted this paragraph in the beginning
of a feature announcement blog post. I think it only reaffirms the inferiority
complex of G+ by explicitly explaining that they are indeed a vibrant
community.

~~~
dannyr
Don't read into it much. Google announces its daily Android activations
regularly and it has the largest smartphone share in the world.

Facebook does that too.

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/facebook-announces-
monthly-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/facebook-announces-monthly-
active-users-were-at-1-01-billion-as-of-september-30th/)

Remember when people knock Google for not announcing Google+ numbers? They are
saying Google is announcing numbers because they are bad.

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GavinB
Early warning: I recently learned that some kids under 13 are adopting
Google+. They all have gmail accounts, but their parents won't let them go on
Facebook.

It's not really any different in terms of legality or functions, but parents
understand (and often don't like) Facebook. So, most likely without the
parents' knowledge, their kids are meeting up via Google+.

~~~
esrauch
The horror!

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webwanderings
I am not sure if I'm following. These Communities appear to be as same as
Pages with a +Name in the URL. I thought they released the feature of Pages
and the + Name a while ago. So what makes Community different?

~~~
endtime
Communities are more like Facebook groups...they have their own discussion
threads, membership/ACLs, etc.

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fourstar
The problem with this I feel and one of the advantages of Twitter is that if a
certain company controls their community page (e.g. Audi USA) and I go to post
some sort of customer service complaint, they have the option of removing it.
With Twitter, I can just add a hashtag or @message them and it'd be visible
globally with search.

~~~
JaggedJax
You can still make a public post not in the group with +Audi or #Audi and it
will function the same way Twitter does.

~~~
fourstar
Good to know. I'm not a heavy G+ user so thanks for the explanation.

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toddecus
Did I really want this generations monopoly in on my social data as well? If
Search== Windows and Apps == Office do I really want Google having access to
my social data too? A healthy skeptic, getting more and more paranoid....

~~~
hyperbovine
Don't post private information online and you should be fine.

~~~
sp332
Maybe the fact the Google knows what my friends search for and email each
other about means they know more about me than I'm comfortable with them
knowing.

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AndrewHampton
Anyone know why the photo app (Snapseed) is only Android 4.0+?

~~~
tartuffe78
Checking it out, I don't see anything in the app that seems to be dependent on
4.0+ features, though obviously things are easier if you can use the latest
and greatest APIs.

I'm guessing that it was more of a support issue. Switching to 4.0+ drops the
number of devices you have to support dramatically, and with that the headache
of all of the obscure device users giving you 1 stars and angry emails.

The team I'm on is transitioning from 2.3+ to 4.0+ support for some technical
reasons, but easier development and support is a huge bonus.

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mudrast
Still nothing for Google Apps users.

~~~
potatolicious
I'm okay with that personally. The thing that bugs me is that it doesn't
support multi-accounts yet. At work we use Google Apps, which I have signed in
simultaneously with my personal Google account. I can pop between my personal
and company GMails easily.

Whenever I click on a G+ link it _insists_ on using my company account,
telling me I can't get Google+, etc etc. There's no way to switch over to my
personal account to actually use it :(

~~~
tsycho
One temporary/hacky multiple account solution is to use multiple Chrome
profiles (I think Firefox also has something similar). This way I have
separate work and personal Gmails working smoothly, and using different themes
for the profiles also means that I don't mistake the windows and send out
something from the wrong email account.

~~~
jrockway
I don't think this is a hacky solution so much as a great solution. Chrome
profiles are a very convenient feature because they can add multi-login
support to _anything_ , not just Google sites.

