10 Essential Google+ Tips

Google's social network, Google+, launched as a field test about a month ago to surprising acclaim. Over 20 million people have joined Google+, through invitations sent by friends admitted to prior testing of the service and by Google employees. Compared to Facebook's 750 million users, Google+ hardly seems worth mentioning at the moment. But in time, it appears destined to become a serious contender.

Already, Google+ is referring more traffic than better established social sites. According to Net Applications, Google+ sends more visitors to websites than Del.icio.us, Flickr, and Mashable.

To sustain its rapid rise, Google's engineers have been working feverishly to address problems that have arisen and to deploy additional features. Google+ is now open to any individual with a Google Account. Businesses will have to wait until Google opens the service to organizations.

Google recently introduced a What's New? page to help describe the changing face of Google+. What follows is a list of 10 improvements and tips, as documented by Google engineers Matt Wadell and Matt Cutts, and various Google+ users.

The What's New? page doesn't detail every change, but it's a convenient way to keep up with important updates. If you have to keep up with every alteration that Google publicly acknowledges, your best bet is to start following every Google employee you can find on Google+.

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