Google Plus - Who is Google +

Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus, sometimes abbreviated as G+) is a social networking and identity service, operated by Google Inc. The service launched on June 28, 2011 in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who are over 18 years of age,[4] to the service to create their own accounts. This was suspended the next day due to an "insane demand" for accounts. Currently each Google+ member has 150 invites to give out.

Google+ integrates social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz, and introduces new services Circles, Hangouts, Sparks, and Huddles. Google+ is available as a web site, and will be available as a desktop application, and is already available as a mobile application, but only on the Android and iOS operating systems. Sources such as The New York Times have declared it Google's biggest attempt to rival the social network Facebook, which had over 750 million users in 2011.

Google Apps mail accounts are the only ones that cannot be used for Google+, as Google Apps doesn't support Google Profiles yet.

Growth
On July 14, 2011, Google announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after it was launched in a "limited" trial phase. After 4 weeks in operation, it had reached 25 million unique visitors. Based on ComScore, the biggest market was the US followed by India. In under a day, the Google+ iPhone app was the most popular free application in the Apple app store.

Early adopters of Google+ have been identified as overwhelmingly male (71.24%). The dominant age bracket (35%) is 25-34.

A survey estimates 13% of U.S. adults have joined Google+ and is projected to have 22% of U.S. adults in a year.

Features
"Circles" enables users to organize contacts into groups for sharing, across various Google products and services. Although other users can view a list of people in a user's collection of circles, they cannot view the names of those circles. The privacy settings also allow users to hide the users in their circles as well as who have them in their circle. Organization is done through a drag-and-drop interface. This system replaces the typical friends list function used by sites such as Facebook.

"Hangouts" are places used to facilitate group video chat (with a maximum of 10 people participating in a single Hangout at any point in time). However, anyone on the web could potentially join the "Hangout" if they happen to possess the unique URL of the Hangout. On August 18, 2011, Google added, a new addition to "Hangouts", by clicking on the Share button under any YouTube video to reveal an icon that suggests watching the video with friends in a Google+ hangout.

"Huddle" is a feature available to Android, iPhone, and SMS devices for communicating through instant messaging within circles.

"Instant Upload" is specific to Android mobile devices; it stores photos or video in a private album for sharing later.

"Sparks" is a front-end to Google Search, enabling users to identify topics they might be interested in sharing with others; "featured interests" sparks are also available, based on topics others globally are finding interesting. Sparks helps to keep users posted on the latest updates on the topics of their interest.

In the "Stream," users see updates from those in their circles. The input box allows users to enter a status update or use icons to upload and share photo and videos. The Stream can be filtered to show only posts from specific Circles.

"Games" (Social Gaming) had 16 games when launched on August 11, 2011. Unlike Facebook games, Google+ games are located under a games tab which gives games less visibility,[citation needed] with notifications that are separate from the rest of a user's notifications.

Google+ has a "+1" button to allow people to recommend sites and parts of sites similar in use to Facebook's Like button.

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, there is not yet an application programming interface that enables software developers to interact with Google+ programmatically.

Similar to other Google applications, Google+ provides integration with other Google applications like Gmail, Calendar, Documents, etc.
A "Data Liberation" option provides the ability to download one's content from Google+.