If you recently checked your Google+ feed then you might be wondering what those new “view community” posts made by your contacts are all about. It’s actually a new feature recently added by Google called Google Communities that lets people of same interests gather together. You can say that it is comparable to Facebook Groups.
Anyone can create their own Google Community and invite others to join in. What type of community you create all depends on you.
Here are some of its features
- You can set the community membership to private or public
- Discussion categories for members to easily search for a specific conversation
- Start Hangouts and plan events with members
- Share with your community any +1 you make on the web
To create a community
- Click on the “Communities” button on the left side of your Google+ page
- Click on the button on top that says “CREATE A COMMUNITY”
- Choose whether to make it Public or Private
- Create a name for your Community
- You can choose whether anyone can join the group or if a member needs moderator approval
- Click on the “Create community” button
I’ve tried this new feature and I’m pretty impressed with it. In just a few hours I’ve been able to meet new people on the various communities that I have joined. Comparing this to Facebook Groups I’d have to say that this is much better. The photos are larger, it’s easier to search for discussions and the best part is that if you want to share something to a particular Community you don’t have to visit it. All you have to do is make your post then select the Community you would like to share it to.
Google says that more than 500 million people have created Google+ profiles. 235 million of these are active across various Google services while 135 million use the service as a standalone social site.