The much anticipated and much hyped Google social network called Google+ is here! Thousands upon thousands of us are getting our invites and trying it out. As with any new software, half of the fun is learning how it works… Unfortunately that takes time and can become frustrating, especially if the software is not extremely self-explanatory. In this post I’ll lay out some of the best tips that I’ve found to help you get up and running on Google+ ASAP!

Get an Invite

First things, first: Get an invite!

If you’ve not yet been invited to try Google+ yet, then you need to follow these steps:

  1. Go to Trey Ratcliff’s photoblog and follow the instructions given at the top of this post
  2. Wait patiently for an invite, if you don’t get an invite after 20 minutes or so, try to ask someone else on the page for one.
    1. If you are afraid of being seen as a spammer by doing this, just delete your first comment that didn’t work out for you.
    2. I only had to try 2 people before I got mine.
  3. That’s it, it’s as simple as that!

Circles

Right now the coolest feature of Google+ in my opinion is Circles. Circles is one thing that will really make Google+ stand out from Facebook.

Circles allows you to organize your contacts into groups, and then allows you to post things to various circles, and read things from various circles. Essentially allowing you to sort through a very large number of contacts extremely easily. I like what Daniel Rosenfeld (composer for the Minecraft soundtrack) said about it: “Thanks to the good structure of Google+, I can add everyone, unlike Facebook! so go on, add me, I’ll add you! http://bit.ly/lZrW09.” He said that because of Circles.

Check out Google’s quick video about Circles:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocPeAdpe_A8

Tips

Here are some tips for new users to Google+:

  • Circles
    • Create circles for groups of people that match groups in your real life; e.g., old friends, co-workers, etc. Put people you actually know into these, and feel free to put people in multiple circles. That way, you can share with just these groups, and you can also view the streams for just these groups when you want to hang out (or Hangout) with just them.
    • Create circles for groups of people that you want to follow, even if you don’t know them. e.g., tech bloggers, public figures. Good sources of reading material, even though you’ll probably never share anything with these circles.
    • And if you get a bunch of followers who you don’t know, that’s OK; you don’t have to add them to your own circles. That way, they can see things which you post publicly, but your own stream doesn’t get flooded. If you want to see what they’re saying, you can browse your Incoming stream, and occasionally spot interesting people to follow or respond to. (This continues to scale well even when you have a Really Huge number of followers, and lets you occasionally keep in touch with people even if you don’t want to be doing that every single time you log on to Google+)
      • The above tips given by +Yonatan Zunger, Follow him on Google+ for more tips, Thanks Yonatan!
    • Copy one circle into another circle. (Shared by +John Palacios)
      1. Go to Circles.
      2. Click on a circle.
      3. Click “View circle in tab”.
      4. On the top right click “More actions” -> “Select all”
      5. Then you can drag everyone from one circle into another circle
  • Hangout Tips
    • Think of it like Starbucks where you are all sitting with your computers, a laid back situation where there is no pressure to talk. Think of old men in an Italian coffee shop with their newspapers… occasionally doing their own thing and occasionally actively engaged…
    • It is socially acceptable to mute people that have background noise. They can unmute themselves when they have their situation together (and earphones on!)
    • No one is in charge. There is no moderator.
    • The video will auto-switch to whoever is talking.
    • If you click on a box, it will just show that person. Click on it again to toggle back to auto-video change based on who is talking
    • If there is a super-active convo going on between 2-4 people, others can feel free to text-chat on the side until there is a good opening.
    • LAST, but not LEAST, welcome new hangout people even though you have no idea who they are, e.g. “Welcome Pambunananan!”
  • Miscellaneous Tips
    • You can click on profile pictures to rotate through them. Nice find by+MG Siegler on that one.
    • In the stream, you can click ‘j’ to navigate down to the next item or ‘k’ to navigate up.
    • If you’re sharing a post with a small circle of people, you can prevent resharing. Click the arrow at the top-right of the post and choose “Disable reshare.”
    • One more: if you’re looking for more fun things in your stream, the “Incoming” stream is stuff from people who are sharing with you, but who you haven’t added to a circle.
    • Text Formatting (Shared by +John Palacios)
      • bold is with *insert text here*
      • strike is with -insert text here -
      • italics is with _insert text here _
    • As the author you always have the option of disabling reshares entirely on a given post. Just click the triangle menu at the top right of your post, and select “Disable reshare.”

That’s all for now! I’ll add more tips to this list as I discover them. Check out +me on Google+