Google Plus Gets New Look

In its attempt to be on top of the social media with its so much in news product; Google Plus; Google rolled out a new look to it last week. The move was slow to start and in a 2 day span virtually everybody was rolled over to the new look. Towards a simpler, more beautiful Google is how guys at Google put it, who now claims that the new look has been rolled over to around 170 million users. Seems the platform is being used by quite a few out there. Here is the introduction to the new improved platform.


New Look
Here is how the new look is:

You will notice a new ribbon floating on the left of the screen and a lot of white space (just below You Might Like) on your right. We will discuss about them both in detail. But for now this is how the new Google Plus stream looks like.


The Ribbon
You now see a ribbon on the left side of your screen, with all the options that previously sat on the top bar of the page.
As you see on the image on the left here the options are now nicely aligned in a vertical way for you to use. Jumping from one to the other just makes you feel like a no refresh kind of a thing and that you just jumped layers. The best part of this ribbon is that Google now allows you to reorder the options in that ribbon to your choice. Just drag your important or most used ones on the top of the ribbon; the rest go down the order automatically.
The ribbon as a whole stays intact with only the center part of the page rolling as you scroll down the page, looking a steady look. There is an option of adding more like the pages that you have from the More option available at the end of the ribbon. The new thing to notice on this ribbon is that the Hangouts now have a new home. Separate from the others, something you will love if you are a regular user of the feature.
Similarly the Explore feature now provides you the options like the Trending on Google Plus and What's Hot feature plus suggestions on whom to follow. You may also do a video chat with a maximum of 9 users at once. Watch out for the slider available at the enter of this page that lets you choose how much of What's Hot news to show on your stream (or Home Page).


Cover Photo To New Profile Look
We saw cover photos being a hit with the FB timeline and now on same lines it seems Google Plus has the same feature, although with some subtle changes as we discuss next, but here is the look for you...

The one that you see on our profile is the default cover provided by Google plus. A little smaller than the one you are accustomed to on FB timeline. You may choose the photo for a size of 940 by 180px. The other option is to have the look like you had previously with your multiple photos chosen as the display. This is how you choose either of the options:

The option at the top Choose a template is where you toggle both the looks!


Your Circles
This is how your Circles page look like now.

Don't forget to see the Actions menu in the pic above. You may increase or decrease your circles size. Although we find it a bit useless and think it rather should have been a size already chosen by the app.


Mini Profiles
We now also have a mini profile look for the users to look in to. Here is how it looks like:

Ripple View
Now see the how the news/share/post is floating down the stream with what Google now calls is the Ripple View:

From a post, just drop the arrow on the top right to see the last option on the drop menu that comes up. Click on the option to go to a Ripples page where the system tells you who all has shared/re shared the post and some more statistics as you go down the page. Enjoy the new stats page:) 


The much discussed: White Space
The content seems to have moved to the left of the screen, leaving out a lot of white space on the right side of the page. Since the new look there have been a lot of criticism on why the space have been left out. If you wanna follow the debate yet, the trending is with #useofwhitespace or #usesofwhitespace. Here are a few ones that we captured for you:

Our Views
The new look is more cleaner than the one we were used to previously. The Ribbon and Ripple effect are cool as well. The #useofwhitespace is a problem for now and Google yet hasn't come with any explanations on what it may be left out for. Not that anybody expects Google to say any word though!! Speculations are doing the rounds with all sorts of news from using that space for some kind of Ads to what not. As we said, keep a track of all that with #useofwhitespace or #usesofwhitespace. 
We will wait to see as the new look shapes up and what Google comes up with but for now it seems like the space may well be left out for the chat windows that you may have open and they will not (unlike previous look) interfere your stream view. Enjoy the chatting with the stream very well visible without any overlap of these two.
The changes are not yet there for the tablets and smartphones, they may be next in line though. And by the way if you think you lost your saved searches, don't forget to look at the More options at the top of your Home page; you have them all grouped there!
Let us know how you like the new look and what you think are the best uses of the white space out there. Happy Crunching till then!!