9 Months of New Web Features
Since launching our new Google+ Web preview nine months ago, we’ve been busy listening to all the feedback, ideas, and issues you’ve shared with us. The end result has been a continuous stream of feature additions, fixes, and updates. With today’s news (http://goo.gl/kqe5MT), I thought it would be useful to recap all these changes and thank everyone for their help in identifying and launching the following:

Home Stream
* Ability to reply to comments in the stream
* +1 comments with one click
* New presentation for original comments on re-shared posts
* Real-time indicator of when there’s new posts
* Auto-play of animated GIFs (with setting to turn on/off)
* 3 column stream view for very wide screens
* Hover over user images for more info about people
* “What You Missed” posts in your Home stream
* Full timestamp on post pages
* No limits on circle streams in menu

Posts
* Ability to create polls
* Ability to crop photos in polls
* Upload multiple images at once to a post
* Ability to re-order multiple images using drag & drop
* Warning to ensure you don’t lose new posts
* View map for images with location
* Multiple improvements to +mentions

Communities
* Search for members in a Community
* Search for posts within a Community
* New simpler invite to Community feature
* Visible about information for Communities
* Links to categories on Community pages
* New Community content controls
* Community owner & moderator badges on comments
* Possible for owners to delete communities
* Possible for owners & moderators to leave communities
* View most recently visited Communities

Collections
* Easily move any of your posts into a Collection
* Improved Collection sharing
* Ability to create a Collection when making a post
* When following a Collection, see related Collections
* Related Collections on post pages
* Follower counts visible on your Collections

Notifications
* Updated notifications in the header
* New full-screen notifications page
* The new Google+ Activity Log
* Pinned posts on Collections, Communities, and Profiles

Profiles
* Easier access to profile information
* Full “About” information on profiles
* Edit your introduction in About Me
* See large profile images in a gallery view
* New Following screen design
* View ‘Posts from Circle’ from the Following screen

Search
* Improved people search results
* Improved Community search results
* Search history

Spam & Abuse
* Additional details when reporting abuse on posts
* Approve or reject comments we (G+) flag as spam
* Remove suspended users from Community member lists

Some of you might rightly recognize that items on this list were present in Google+ Classic but were added to the new Web preview over the past nine months. Why? Last year we completely re-wrote the Google+ Web app from scratch. Rather than rebuild every nook and cranny that developed over the five year history of Google+, we started with a clean slate of the features people used the most (based on our data & research). We then released this preview version to collect feedback and find out what people missed the most of what we left out.

Not every feature/setting has returned but we have been continuously listening and making updates (as seen above). And we’ll continue doing so. To make your voice heard, please send us your ideas/issues using the Send Feedback menu item. Thanks~

New G+ is the default from 30th August.

http://googleappsupdates.blogspot.com/2016/08/reminder-new-version-of-google-plus-becoming-default.html

G+ Android Update 8.4 & 8.5
We’re continuing to work on larger re-writes that will make development on the Google+ Android app faster in the future. As a result, our Android releases continue to be lighter on features and mostly consist of bug fixes. Two weeks ago we rolled out version 8.4.0 of the G+ Android app and today we’re rolling out version 8.5.0. Between them:

* 21 bug fixes
* 3 accessibility issues addressed
* Show profile pictures next to comments in home stream

As always, please send us your ideas/issues using our Send Feedback menu item as that’s the best way to ensure we’ll see them. Thanks~

G+ iOS Update 5.9.0
Our eighth Google+ iOS app update of the year is rolling out today with updated profile features and a new movie mode for cinematic viewing of YouTube videos. John’s post has the details: https://plus.google.com/+JohnKilcline/posts/SoZe1TNdfRn

Thanks~

Google+ Collections Search
Google+ search now returns a bigger set of Collections that are relevant to your searches and interests, via improved topicality search. For instance, searching for “Bird photos” today surfaces a wider set of Collections that are topically relevant but may not have those specific words in their name.

As always, please send us your ideas/issues using our Send Feedback menu item as that’s the best way to ensure we’ll see them. Thanks~

Introducing the Album Archive
Today we made the Google Album Archive available to all our users. This new page is an archive for Picasa Web Albums (http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2016/02/moving-on-from-picasa.html) which previously collected your photo albums across Google services such as:

* Google+ photos from posts
* Google profile photos
* Photos from Blogger
* Photos shared in Hangouts
* Maps panoramas
* and more

On the Album Archive, you can view, download, or delete these albums and photos. As the name implies… this really is an archive (no commenting, editing, adding, etc.) and part of our transition from Picasa. You can access your album archive page from your About Me page on Google: https://aboutme.google.com/

Your Album Archive page includes a ‘Photos of You’ album which shows any photos you have been tagged in including photos owned by other people. Additionally, you can navigate to other people’s Album Archive pages by tapping on ABOUT on their Google+ profile page (available on Android today and other platforms soon). There you’ll see the photos and videos that person has previously shared with you.

As always, please send any ideas/issues using the Send Feedback menu item as that’s the best way to ensure we’ll see it.
Thanks~

Why Collections?
We on the Google+ team often get asked why are you making this or that change? What’s the thinking behind product changes/features. To that end, thought I’d share my perspective on why Collections?…

Collections allows people to organize what they publish into multiple topics. These topics can be followed or unfollowed. This:

* helps readers to get more content with control they don’t have when just following people. many other social sites are “all or nothing” when it comes to following people.

* frees up content creators to publish more and not worry about overloading followers. we often hear concerns about “spamming my followers” with posts they might consider irrelevant.

* encourages content creators to post across multiple interests instead of focusing only on one topic. i.e. don’t just have to be the “deep sea photography person”

* gives content creators archiving abilities they long for. many publish as personal catalogs/journals and for recovery (get back to my content) reasons.

* content creators bemoan all their content disappearing “into the stream”, collections provide a way to give their posts re-newed life and permanence.

Hope that gives some sense of the thinking behind the Collections feature. Thanks~