Google+

Google+ was a social networking website owned and operated by Google. Google+ was opened to people with an invitation on April 28, 2008 for testing. The next day on an unknown date, people with accounts were allowed to invite friends to the service. This was stopped within a day after there was a insane demand for accounts.

Google+ is made to work with different Google social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz. It also has features including Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles. It has been said that this is Google's biggest attempt to rival the social network Facebook.

On October 8, 2018, Google said they were going to shut down Google+ by the end of August 2019. This is because a software bug in Google+ let people see the data of hundreds of thousands of users. They later moved the shut down date to April 2, 2019 after discovering yet another bug.

Growth
On 14 July 2011, Google said that Google+ had 10 million users two weeks after it was opened to people with invitations. After three weeks, Google+ had 20 million users. The Google+ iPhone app was the most popular free application in the Apple App Store less than a day after it was added to the store.

Features
 "Circles" lets users to organize contacts into groups for sharing.
 "Messaging" lets people communicate with their circles using Android, iPhone, and SMS devices.
 "Hangouts" are places used to have a group video chat within a circle.
 "Instant Upload" lets people with Android smartphones upload and store photos or video in a private album for sharing later.
 "Sparks" uses Google Search to let users find topics they might like to share with others. 
 "Streams" lets users see updates from those in their circles. This is similar to a news feed.
 "Ripples" is a visualization tool that allows users to play back public shares and conversations.

References

Other websites

The Google+ Project

Category:2011 establishments in the United States
Category:Google
Category:American social networking websites
Category:2019 disestablishments in the United States