Google+ redesign

Hey, everyone We have seen some recent changes made to Google+. As you all know Google is trying its best to take its place as a serious player in social network market on the internet. Many years ago there was not much of a competition in this field, if you still remember the days of Myspace being the only dominant player. But as years have passed there started to appear other competitors like Facebook that ultimately dethroned Myspace and totally buried it in its grave. So what was the problem with Myspace? Well, it couldn't see the needs of the new generation of people and was unable to adapt itself to the changes. In that time Facebook came along and offered some great ways to socialize our life. It was a great success and still is today. Like in those days the market has some other players as well but these are in minority. As you all know Google has been very interested to dive into this market. It has tried many ways but none of them succeeded. Some says these were trial and error tactics of Google to find the right solution. So Google had announced last year its new social network called Google+. In its initial release it had many cool ideas like circles, hangouts and a hybrid like system of Twitter and Facebook. These ideas sound great but in order to be successful Google had to persuade people that its social application is different and innovative while still looks familiar.



In its initial release Google+ had some familiar UI to that of Facebook. This was an intentional decision to attract more people. But it was also one of the arguments that Google+ was simply trying to copy Facebook and offering nothing that Facebook didn't have. After getting many feedbacks and analysis Google has given its social application a new facelift. The changes are really radical though. Now we'll discuss some of these changes.


  Menu bar for navigating


Google has replaced its menu bar on the right side after many complaints from the users. It was located on top side with small icons and was really hard to find these when you are not familiar with it.

Figure 1: Top menu bar old

In the new design icons are bigger and have a text for easy navigation.

Figure 2: Right menu bar new

Chat bar

In old design chatting was not something easy to do and especially for starting a hangout new users had to look around quite some time. Also filtering streams from different groups could be done by selecting one of the options in "Stream" menu.

Figure 3: Old chat bar

In the new design hangout and chatting are put together in one menu on the right side of the UI. Overall starting a hangout is very easy now.

Figure 4: New chat bar

These are some of the changes we discussed but of course there are others we didn't mention like hangout window now allows us to select people from our list while still giving the option to add more people by typing their name or the circle which they belong to.

Figure 5: Hangout window

Google is really trying hard to succeed with Google+. There are currently 100+ million users. Do you think the history will repeat itself and Facebook will share the fate of Myspace? If you use Google+ will you still be using it after these changes? Please let us know.