has struggled to win over Facebook users— really, nearly everyone—with its social network, +. A completely redesigned + launched on dnesday at I/O with features that could make + a more fierce Facebook competitor.
The + overhaul includes a fancy, multi-column stream (not a news feed, a stream) with cards that you can click to flip over find related content. In a potentially creepy move, will now auto-hashtag your + posts with relevant tags, even if you post a photo with no description. An example demoed during dnesday’s I/O keynote involved a photo of the Eiffel Tower that knew to tag as #eiffeltower because of lmark recognition metadata.
The good news: You can turn this feature off, or delete tags that gets wrong. But the company is pushing for more depth in its social network—less emphasis on a stream of information more of a push toward discovering relevant content.
“It’s very easy to see a long list of things that have been shared with you, like a never-ending newspaper,” said Vic Gundotra, ’s senior vice president of engineering.
But people don’t want a never-ending newspaper like the Facebook is pushing with its recent News Feed overhaul—or at least, that’s what is betting on.
The multi-column stream can be condensed into one column or stretched into three, depending on screen size. otos videos can span multiple columns. Boxes posts are animated, popping up when you want to share something flipping over to see more content.
A st-alone Hangouts app
+ has since its launch two years ago been defined by circles, the ability to share content with specific groups (coworkers, family, friends who live in New York, so on). Gundotra said more than half of all sharing on + is done in private circles.
Hangouts, that Skype-like feature that lets you video chat with your Gmail contacts, on dnesday launched as a st-alone, cross-platform app to let you message video chat with your circles on +.
The app looked pretty amazing in Gundotra’s demo. You can share images, text, or tap the video icon drop everyone from your group chat into a video chat (for free!). You can also save the history of a group chat for years, which may be useful for families sharing baby updates photos.
otos are a major focus of the changes to ’s social networking push. On dnesday, showed off new photography features for editing sharing images. Highlights include tools that automatically soften wrinkles on faces reduce “noise” in grainy photographs. compared the features, performed on servers, to those in photo editing software or specialized modes on cameras.
is clearly no longer content with being the No. 2 social network, upping the ante with a redesigned + st-alone Hangouts app.
The + redesign Hangouts app are expected to roll out dnesday afternoon on desktops, iOS, Android.
of News Service contributed to this report.
Updated at 12:17 p.m. to include information on photo-editing features in +.
