Google has announced the opening of the Google+ Communities, the new section of the Mountain View company’s social network equivalent to the Facebook groups where people can meet to discuss a common interest.
A little more than a year after its opening, Google+ has already crossed the 500 million users threshold. Approximately 135 million users are active in the the stream of updates which is the main part of Google+ but 100 more million users are active in what has become a true ecosystem that includes other services such as Google Play, Gmail and more.
Someone still insists to argue that Google+ is a ghost town but the people who put that little bit of effort it takes to find interesting people to follow know very well that the social network is very vital and the quality of the updates is high. Now there are circles for all tastes so you just have to try a little searching within Google+ to find in a moment a few hundreds people to follow.
Google lack only a section equivalent to Facebook groups. It’s true that there are the pages but it’s not the same thing. Even on Facebook there are groups and fan pages, which can have very similar characteristics when they are not dedicated to companies and are not official pages of famous people. However, it’s clear that the groups are the place where people interested in a certain topic gather to discuss it and now the Google+ Communities add what I think is an important service for the social network.
The icon to get to the Communities has been added to the Google+ stream along with other functions on the left border. In creating a community you can decide whether it has public or private access, if they can be searched, if the members who want to join it have to be approved and if you require a public moderator.
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From a Community it’s also possible to start a hangout and plan events with other members. It has become possible to share contents not only to the stream but also to a Community, of course to do when the topic is relevant.
After the announcement, it took several hours before the Google+ Communities were actually available for all users and yet so many of them have been created in a very short time. It’s a confirmation of the vitality of this social network and not surprisingly active users in general are happy about it.
In contrast, Facebook users tend to have a rather low opinion about it even though they use it regularly, especially for the continuing problems related to privacy. Facebook has twice as many users as Google+ but its founder Mark Zuckerberg should worry because the Google+ Communities may be a service important to convince other people to use Google+ instead of Facebook.
