Messaging & Online Collaboration: Google+ Project Emerges as Facebook With More Refined Manners

Touring Google+

Waiting for our invite to be processed, eWEEK takes the interactive video tour, which highlights the components that make up Google+.

Social Circles

Circles make it easy to put people in a group and begin sharing info. Users can enter friends names and email addresses to add them to a Circle.

Drag-and-Drop

Dragging and dropping profiles in Circles is an easy way to add people to a group.

Giving Off Sparks

Sparks is a sort of news feed/topic generation tool.

Sparks in Action

Behold! A list of interests in a user's profile.

Streaming

The social status update stream in Google+ allows users to add photos, videos, links and their location.

Hangouts

Users can join Hangouts to conduct video chats with friends in a Circle.

Huddle Up

The Huddle feature enables group messaging.

Photo, Video Uploads

Upload lets users add photos and videos from their mobile phones.

Video Tour

Take this brief video tour of Google+ to better familiarize yourself with how it works.

Mobile App

Google+ came to the Android Market for Android smartphones and tablets today. It's expected to hit Apple's App Store later.

Busted

However, after we downloaded it, we received a message saying we weren't able to access the app yet. Here's what the app looks like in this photo, and in this video.

Tapping Picasa

So, we received our invitation as we were compiling this preview. We logged in and were greeted with this offer. Where does Google+ get all of those photos? By linking users' Picasa accounts, of course!

Welcome

Here is what an official Google+ landing screen looks like. Stay tuned for more Google+ from eWEEK this week!