As we become more social in our business as well as our personal life it becomes more and more important to be involved with social networking whether we like it or not.

There has been a flurry of activity from Google over the past months seeing the launch of  Google +1 and more and more people creating their Google Profiles.

Behind the scenes, Google + has been in development and we ask “is it a contender for Facebook?”

The Google+ project: A quick look

Here’s a quick summary of what it’s about but it’s best to take the tour and get it from the horse’s mouth because Google really are great with their own marketing!

Circles

You share different things with different people in real life, so sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be as difficult as it is right now with Facebook for example. Circles makes it easy to put your friends/contacts from different relationships (friends vs business contacts for example) into different circles – just as you would in real life.  This means that there is no longer this question about how to keep business and pleasure separate.  That’s definitely a tick in the box!

Hangouts

Hangouts lets you talk video to video with a group of people – this is very powerful and with the easy of mobile video this is going to be a powerful tool.

Instant Upload

Taking and sharing photos and videos is a great way to build relationships. However, up until now getting photos and vidoes off your phone has been really time consuming.  With Instant Upload, your photos and videos upload themselves automatically, to a private album on Google+. All you have to do is decide who to share them with.

Sparks

Tell Sparks what you’re into and it will send you stuff it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, or share.

Huddle

Texting between a group to organise a meet up is great but it is pretty time consuming going back and forth to the group. Huddle turns all those different conversations into one simple group chat, so everyone gets on the same page all at once.

Now all of this may look like it only has relevance for friends and family but look how Facebook started out?

Become one of their next testers of the system

Keep up to date with progress via Mashable

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below