Google+ is the new hot social-networking site in town and has captured the hearts, imaginations and user-ship of millions in just a few short weeks. It’s now estimated to have over 10 million users and impressive engagement statistics along with the some all-star supporters. It has however, until now, not had an iPhone App!
Google+ has a couple of fundamental differences to the Facebooks of the world – most notable is the group-nature of contact organisation which encourages sharing with groups of people on an opt-in basis and which makes organising fun through, frankly, super-cool circles in HTML 5 on the desktop browser.
The Google+ mobile-web experience is lacking and so this app has been much-awaited. Let’s see how it stacks up!
The good:
– Push notifications for Google+ events
– Photo browsing is well-implemented and commenting is easy
– It’s a great iPhone-native experience over Google+
The not-so-good:
– No video chat in huddles
– The Circles interface on the iPhone is basic and lacks the cool factor that makes it appealing on the web
– It crashes a *lot* on iOS 5
Overall – this brings Google+ to the iPhone; nothing amazing here, but a much-needed native interface to enable Google+ to compete on the same level as Facebook and Twitter.
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