Google+ gets pretty!

Google+ got a fancy new update with 46 new features which looks very much like a Pinteresty Facebook but in a very good, user friendly way. Let's look at some of the new Google+ features. From Google+:

• A multi-column layout. You’ll see one, two, or three columns of content depending on your screen size and orientation.
• Awesome-sized media. Photos and videos can fill the entire width of the stream, making it easier to scan, and nicer to look at.
• Delightful animations. The sharebox bounces, the menus slide, and the cards flip and fade — just to name a few.

When you go in for the first time you will see some screen prompts that tell you about the new look.

Hangouts and chat options are now on the top right corner. Click on the green parenthesis and you will see this new drop down menu.

Photos: your darkroom is now a Google data center

Great pictures aren’t taken, they’re made. And it’s the making part that many of us don’t have time for. We'd all love to have photos that capture our vacations and birthdays and anniversaries the way we remember them. But wonderful images require lots (and lots) of work.

We think everyone should be able to make beautiful photos, so today we’re launching a set of initiatives aimed at improving your photos automatically — basically your camera, plus Google’s cloud. Here’s a few things you’ll enjoy once your pictures are powered by Google:

• Auto Backup (aka Instant Upload). Too many pictures stay stranded on the phone, so with your permission, we’ll automatically back up your mobile pics as you snap them. Everyone receives unlimited free storage at standard size (2048px), and 15GB of free storage at full size (up from 5GB).

• Auto Highlight. Sifting through vacation photos to assemble the perfect album can take hours. Auto Highlight helps you find your favorites faster by de-emphasizing duplicates, blurry images and poor exposures, and focusing instead on pictures with the people you care about, landmarks, and other positive attributes. Simply visit the Photos page, and you’ll see your Highlights ready to share.

• Auto Enhance. Taking a good photo and making it great is a task generally reserved for professional photographers. That’s why, for example, we continue to support and improve tools like the Nik Collection. For everyone else we’re introducing Auto Enhance: a new way to improve brightness, contrast, saturation, structure, noise, focus… and dozens of other factors automatically. Simply upload some photos, then open the lightbox to see Google's enhancements. And that’s it. (And of course: you can undo the changes at any time.) Here’s some sample images to get you started.

• Auto Awesome. Sometimes we’ll create a brand new image based on a set of photos in your library. For example: if you upload a sequence of photos, we’ll try and animate them automatically. Or if you send us a few family portraits, we’ll find everyone’s best smile, and stitch them together into a single shot. Likewise with panoramas, filmstrips, and a whole lot more. We call these kinds of enhancements Auto Awesome.

The new header menu is very easy to use with tabs along the top.

Communities look a lot different but I love that the guidelines for the community are on the right and easy to use.

This is what it looks like when you're going to share a new post. Google+ is now going to add related hashtags:

• We’ll look at the post, determine what it’s about, and tag it accordingly.
• Behind the scenes, we’ll also identify and rank relevant conversations across the network.
• When you click on the related hashtag, we’ll flip the card, and let you browse related content inline.

When you click on the sharebox, you get a very cool pop up like this:

What's hot got a nice update with a little red flame icon and more prominent display.

What do you think of the new Google+ update? I love it and can't wait to really test all the new features.

Photo credit niallkennedy