The main stream is the one you see immediately after you log into Google+, or when you click the Home button (Viewing Your Stream). In the center are posts from everybody in all your circles. You can tell you’re looking at your main stream because the word “Stream” appears in red on the left of the page, and in black at the top of the page (circled on The Anatomy of a Stream).

The big difference between your main stream and the streams for your various circles is which posts you see: Your main stream includes posts by all the people in your circles, while the stream for a specific circle only includes posts by the people in that circle. Another difference is what appears on the right side of the page. When viewing your main stream, here’s what appears in the right-hand column:

Click the name of a circle on the left side of the Stream page, and the page will change in a few major ways. Most importantly, the center column now shows only posts by people in that circle.

On the right side of the stream page, a few other things have changed, too. The top item is now specific to the circle you selected: It includes the name of the circle, how many people are in it, the circle’s description, and thumbnails of some of the people in it. Beneath the thumbnails is an “Add to [circle name]” box. Click this box and start typing a name, and matching Google+ members (and contacts from your Google account, if applicable) appear in a drop-down list. Click a name to add that person to the circle whose stream you’re viewing.

Below that you may see the same Suggestions section described previously. There’s also a “Circle sharing” section that includes a tempting green button. Clicking it lets you show the people in any of your circles to the people in any other circle, all your circles, or the public. (Circle sharing is covered in detail on Sharing Circles.) Below that is the Hangouts section described above, and in the bottom right of your screen is the “Send feedback” button described next.

UP TO SPEED: The Feedback Button

As of this writing, Google+ is still pretty new and technically in beta (available for people to use, but with no promises about everything working properly). In order to help improve the site, Google makes it easy for you to weigh in with suggestions, complaints, and other kinds of observations by including a gray “Send feedback” button in the bottom-right corner of every Google+ screen. Click it, and you’ll get a pretty cool tool for telling Google when something goes wrong on the site, or if there’s something that you just don’t like about Google+. A box pops up that includes two buttons: Highlight and “Black out.”

The Highlight button is automatically selected. With this button turned on, you can move your cursor over a section of your screen to point it out to Google (you can highlight several different parts of the screen if you want). If your screen includes something you don’t want the people at Google to see like a friend’s phone number, click the “Black out” button and then click the thing you want to hide.

In the “Describe the problem” box, explain the bug you’ve discovered as specifically as you can. When you’re done, click the Preview button to see the information that will be sent to Google. If you want to make changes, click Cancel to get back to your original screen and start again. If everything looks okay, click “Send feedback to Google.”

Go ahead and use this handy feedback tool whenever you feel irked or like something must be broken. The folks who created Google+ will honestly appreciate it.

Every post includes the same basic features:

Below all that is the meat of the post: whatever the person typed when he created the post. If he included a link to something (like the knot-tying article mentioned in the post shown on What’s In a Post), a preview of the web page he linked to appears below what he wrote: a sample photo from his latest photo album, a still from the YouTube video he pointed to, or a small slice of a map showing where he “checked in,” for example. You’ll get a better sense of what to look for in a post when you write one of your own.

Now you know how to view different streams and decipher posts, and you’re probably eager to do something besides just look at stuff. You’ll learn how to interact with other people’s posts later in this chapter (Interacting with Posts). For now, it’s time to learn how to write your inaugural post.

The icons in the lower-right of the “Share what’s new” box let you add extras to a post: a photo (or photos), a video, a web link, and your location. However, you can add only one of these extra elements to each post—a set of photos, a video, or a link. The one exception to this rule is that you can add a location to any post.

These extras can be a subtle footnote to the text you write in the “Share what’s new” box, or the text can serve as a caption for—or description of—the extra. For example, you could write a long post that thanks everybody for coming out to your fundraising event, and then attach a crowd shot to demonstrate the success; or you could write a short note about the event, and then attach a series of photos showing highlights of the night. Most links needs some kind of explanation—at least a blurb about why you find a site interesting or relevant—but most videos don’t need lots of text, as they usually speak for themselves.

Here’s how to add each kind of goodie:

Posting on Google+, or any social networking site, is a good way to learn how to best convey your sentiments. As you experiment, you’ll learn what gets a reaction (positive or negative) from your friends and contacts. If you want to get a discussion going, for example, pose a semi-open question: “What do you listen to when you’ve got a whole lot of household chores to crank through?” That works a lot better usually than just posting “Ugh, chores!” The same goes for photos, videos, and links—the more informative and interesting they are, the more likely you’ll get responses and have your posts shared more widely (Sharing Others’ Posts).

You can casually mention people in your posts as much as you like: “Mom just made the best peach pie!” or “Just got back from hanging out with my buddy Jim—good times!” But, confusingly, Google+ uses the term mention to mean something really specific: directly addressing another Google+ member, or even a friend who hasn’t joined the site yet, by including her name in a post with a + character before it. This comes in handy when you want to bring someone’s attention to a post, and perhaps give other people reading your post a link to the tagged person’s Google+ profile. You can do that by mentioning the person in context (“+Adam Pash and I are huge fans of AeroPress coffee,” for example), or by tossing someone’s name in at the end (“AeroPress coffee is always amazing! +Adam Pash”).

When you mention someone in a post, in addition to seeing your post in her stream, the person you mentioned also gets notified about the post (exactly what form the notification takes depends on her settings; see Chapter 4 for details). (If she’s not signed up for Google+, Google+ sends her an email notification.) Also, her Google+ name (which links to her Google+ profile) is visible—and clickable—to whomever else you share the post with, unless she’s blocked them (the next section covers sharing options in detail; Blocking, Muting, and Reporting Posts explains blocking). So, your friend who likes to keep a low profile online might not appreciate you mentioning her in your posts.

To tag someone in a post, type either @ or +, and then start typing the person’s name. In the list of suggestions that appears, click her name or, if the right name is highlighted in the list, just hit the space bar or Enter key (Return on a Mac).

You can mention people who aren’t in your circles, and even people who haven’t added you to their own circles, and they’ll see the post in their main stream. Do that too often or in an invasive kind of way, however, and the person you mentioned might block you (Blocking, Muting, and Reporting Posts). Also note that, when you mention somebody in a post, Google+ adds their name to the list of people and circles the post is shared with, and that you can’t remove her. (Probably Google+’s way of making sure you don’t say mean things about people.)

If you want to get really advanced, you can include hashtags in your posts, just like on Twitter. To learn about hashtags and how to add them to your posts, flip to Throw Your Post into the Mix with Hashtags.

Now that you have a general overview of the ways you can share with certain groups of people, it’s time to learn how to actually pick those groups in Google+. These visibility options let you share items with only the people who will truly appreciate them.

As the following sections explain, Google+ tries to be smart by automatically choosing a group to share your post with based on which stream you’re viewing while you write it, but you can always choose a different group if you want.

Writing a post while viewing your main stream

On your main stream page, below the text of your post and any extras you added, is a box that reads “+Add circles or people to share with.” If you shared your last post with “Your circles,” Google+ automatically puts “Your circles” in this box again. If you shared your last post with some other group of folks or you don’t want to share this post with everyone in all your circles, you have to select the people and circles you want to share with.

To be more selective about who you share with, click the “+Add circles or people to share with” box. A menu appears that includes several options. The text at the top of the menu explains that you can type a person’s name or email address to share just with that person, or type the name of the circle you want to share with. Here’s what the other options are for:

• Specific circles. At the top of the menu are the names of your circles. If you have more than three or four circles, you’ll also see a “# more” link that indicate how many other circles you have that aren’t shown in the list; click this link to see the names of all your circles. To select the circle you want to share with, click its name in this list or type its name in the +Add box.

  Tip

  The first three circles you see listed in this menu are the ones in the upper left of the circles section of your Circles page (covered in Chapter 2). Changing the order they appear in this list is a simple matter of heading to your Circles page and then dragging your most important circles to the first three slots.

• Your circles. This means that your post will be shared with everyone in all your circles. If you share that picture of Butterscotch with this group, both Bob and Rachel will likely see it in their main Google+ streams, which include everything posted by everybody in their circles. In addition, Bob will see it in his Gourmands stream, and Rachel will see it in her “Professional Contacts to Synergize and Conquer” stream.

• Extended circles. This option is something of an odd duck. It includes all the people in all your circles and all the people in their circles. It’s the Google+ equivalent of “friends of friends,” except that your posts appear in the Incoming streams of the people in your friends’ circles. (The box on The Incoming Stream has more about this stream.)

• Public. If you cropped that photo of Butterscotch so that it showed nothing but your fuzzy feline, then you’d have no reason not to post it for the whole world to see. In that case, you could post it using the Public setting. Doing that sends the post to all your Google+ contacts and makes it visible to everyone on Google+ and on the whole Internet. That means that a friend of yours could copy and paste the timestamp from your post (see Editing, Deleting, and Controlling Your Posts for details), send it out in an email, post it to their blog, or otherwise distribute it, and anybody could look at it.

  Posting something publicly isn’t as scary as it may sound. It’s a great option for people working in the media, building their personal or small business brand, or trying to get attention for their chosen topics. Public sharing is what people do on Twitter, and it’s increasingly how Facebook wants its users to share their posts and photos. In Google+, it just means that you’re sharing to everyone in your circles and other people could potentially find it on the Web.

When you select an option in this list, a corresponding blue or green rectangle appears in the +Add box. For example, if you have a Lifehacker circle and select it in the list of visibility options, a blue rectangle labeled “Lifehacker” appears in the +Add box, as shown here.

Writing a post while viewing a circle’s stream

If you write your post while viewing a specific circle’s stream, Google+ automatically puts a blue rectangle representing that circle in the +Add box because it assumes you want to share the post with that circle. If that’s true, then you can just leave the +Add box alone. But if you want to share with more people than just the ones in that circle, click “+Add more people” to do just that. You can also click the X that appears when you mouse over a circle or person’s name to remove them from the sharing list.

For a reminder of who’s in that circle, point your cursor at the blue rectangle. If there are a bunch of people in that circle, you’ll see the first few names, and you can see the rest by clicking the “View all” link at the top of the pop-up box. What about the “Notify about this post” checkbox? Normally, when you post to a specific circle, the people in that circle will see this post if they look at their main stream or the stream for whatever circle they put you in (like if Bob looks at the stream for his Gourmands circle, for example). If you turn on the “Notify about this post” checkbox, Google+ will also send the people you’re sharing with a special alert about your post. Depending on their Google+ settings, that could mean they see a notification in their Google toolbars, receive an email, or hear a little bloop from their phone—something like, “Take note: Devon Kurdy wants you to see this post.” (Chapter 4 has the details on notifications.)

Note

If you add someone who’s not on Google+ to one of your circles, when you go to share a post with that circle, you’ll see a checkbox next to the Share button labeled “Also email 1 person not yet using Google+.” This checkbox is turned on automatically, and it’s basically an attempt by Google+ to attract more users. Google is hoping that, when your friend gets an email letting him know about the post, he’ll sign up for Google+ to see the brilliant insight you’ve written.

Other posting tips

Clicking the +Add box and selecting circles by clicking works okay if you’ve got less than, say, a dozen circles. But if you have more than that, the list becomes quite long and a bit cumbersome. Fortunately, there’s an easier way to add circles: click the +Add box and then typing a few letters of the name of the circle you want. When the right one appears, hit Enter (Return on a Mac) or click its name in the list.

In addition to—or instead of—sharing with circles, you can share posts with individual people. For example, say you want to share news of your promotion with everyone in your Family circle and your buddy Bruce, or you just heard some gossip about your high school math teacher and want to share it with your three closest friends. To share with a specific person, click the +Add box and start typing her name, and Google+ will suggest matches.

The names of people who are already contacts of yours should appear at the top of the list, but what about the other folks listed? Those names are Google+’s guesses as to other Google+ members you might know. If a name looks familiar but you’re not sure (or the name is something as common as John Smith), click the name to add that person. Then, click the person’s name in the +Add box to see her profile.

Tip

When you mention someone in a post, that person is automatically added to +Add box, and also, even if they’re not? That’s the point behind Google+ adding them automatically, right? You can’t remove them, either. Google+ is old-fashioned that way—it won’t let you go talking about somebody without their knowing it.

If it turns out you don’t know this particular John Smith, no problem. To delete a person or circle from the +Add box, click the X at the right end of the rectangle representing that person or circle.

When all the right people and circles are listed in the +Add box, click Share to send your post out to those people’s streams.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: The Incoming Stream

I don’t see an Incoming circle on my Circles page, so what’s the deal with the Incoming stream?

The Incoming stream is an anomaly in that it doesn’t match up with a specific circle. (The other exceptions are your main stream—which shows posts from people in all your circles—and the Notifications stream, which only includes notifications [see Chapter 4].) Here are the kinds of posts that appear in your Incoming stream:

• Posts by friends of friends. As you learned on Writing a post while viewing your main stream, if someone who’s connected to one of the people in your Google+ circles shares something and sets the visibility of that post to “Extended circles,” it’ll show up in this stream.

• Posts specifically shared with you. These are posts where people either selected your name in the +Add box or mentioned you in the post (see Mentioning People in Posts). You’ll see these posts in your main stream, too.

• One-sided posts. As you’ve learned, the whole circles concept is a two-way street: You can add people to circles, and they can add you to circles. If you haven’t added Bruce to any of your circles but he’s put you in one of his, when he writes a post or shares someone else’s post (see Sharing Others’ Posts), it’ll show up in this stream.

Your Incoming stream will quickly get cluttered with posts by people you don’t know, people who post too much stuff to too many people, and folks you haven’t added to a circle. You might think that perusing this stream is a good way to find people and add them to your circles, but there’s a specific section of the Circles page (“People who have added you”) that serves this purpose far better; see Adding People to Circles for the details. So, overall, the Incoming stream isn’t terribly useful for anything besides killing time.

Giving someone’s post a +1 (pronounced “plus one”, just like it looks) is the equivalent of a thumbs-up, a laugh with a smile, or a knowing nod—just a quick acknowledgement that you think the post is good, funny, poignant, worthwhile, or right up your alley. (The box on The +1 explains where the term “+1” came from.)

To give a post a +1, click the +1 button below the body of the post. When you do, you see a little animation that “rolls over” the total number of +1s that post has received, and the +1 button turns blue. If you’re the first person to give the post a +1, the phrase “You +1’d this” appears below the +1 box. If others have already registered their +1 sentiments, you see a number below that box indicating the total number of +1s (“+24,” for example).

Other people who look at the post are able to see that you’ve given it a +1. To see who liked a post, click the blue +# link, and Google+ displays the little pop-up shown below.

When you want to respond to a post with something more specific than a +1, click the Comment link next to the +1 button. (You can, of course, both comment on a post and give it a +1.) When you do, a text box appears so you can type your feedback.

You can do most of the same things in a comment that you can do in your own posts, like mention people or link to websites or videos—although you don’t get the same icons or images as when you’re writing your own post. You can’t attach image or files from your computer to a comment, so if you want to write a really robust response to a post, your best bet is to start a brand-new post that includes a link to the original post (Editing, Deleting, and Controlling Your Posts explains how), and then mentioning the original post’s writer (Mentioning People in Posts) in your post.

When you’re ready to add your comment, click the “Post comment” button (hitting Enter (Return on a Mac) instead doesn’t post your comment, it just adds a line break to what you’ve written).

If you post a comment and then decide that what you wrote wasn’t quite right, click the Edit link below the comment. Doing so gives you full editing powers on your comment.

If things went really wrong and you’d like to back out entirely, click “Delete comment.” If you change your mind again and want to leave your comment as is, click Cancel. After you make changes and click “Save changes,” Google+ updates your comment, changes the timestamp next to it to reflect when you made your changes, and adds “(edited)” next to the timestamp so folks know that you changed the wording.

Posts aren’t the only things you can give a +1 to. Sometimes the best thing about a post isn’t the post itself, but another person’s take on it. When you’re looking at a post and point your cursor at a particular comment, you’ll see a +1 button appear. To let everyone know how much you like that comment, click that button.

If someone writes a post that’s good enough that you want to share with your friends, click the Share link below the post to send the text, link, or whatever else is in the post out to your circles. (Don’t worry—the original author will get credit.) The pop-up that appears includes some of the same controls you see when you write a post from scratch, plus a text box at the top where you can type in an explanation of why you’re re-posting this item.

Unless it’s entirely self-explanatory, it’s a good idea to add a little note about why you’re sharing a post. Without a note from you, people in your circles might be surprised to see a post from someone they don’t know. It’s kind of like bringing someone new to a gathering of friends—you should probably introduce him and explain how you know him.

The folks you share your posts with generally mean well. But sometimes their sense of humor and yours might not jibe. Or they may get into an argument in the comments of your post, or characterize aspects of what you posted in ways you don’t appreciate. Fortunately, you have some control over what goes on in the comments of your posts. In the drop-down menu shown on Controlling Sharing, choose Edit Post.

When you select this menu option, two icons appear at the right edge of each comment on your post when you mouse over them: an X and a flag. Click the X to remove the comment, or click the flag to remove the comment and report it to the Google+ team. You should only report a comment if you think it’s spam (if it says “Low-cost electronics, iPads, Viagra!,” for example) or an inappropriate or abusive remark that violates Google’s terms of service (which basically state that you can’t write anything hateful or obscene on the site). When you remove a comment, the person who wrote it receives a notification that you’ve done so. If you report a comment, the comment’s author will hear from Google’s community moderators, and, if the person gets reported a few times, likely get kicked off Google+ entirely.

On Sharing Others’ Posts, you learned how to share a post written by a friend who’s in one of your circles. When someone posts a link using the Public visibility setting (Writing a post while viewing your main stream), anyone can link to it and see it, so sharing is simple.

But when you’re posting something to one of your hand-picked circles, you might not want to let those people share that post with the people in their circles. Just like with real-life storytelling and gossip-spreading, the results can sometimes turn an innocent quip or story into a great big drama. So Google+ includes two features that help keep sharing in check: a warning message and the ability to lock your posts.

When you post something to any group other than Public, if one of the people in your circles clicks that post’s Share link, Google+ shows them a little reminder that you didn’t share the post publicly, so you probably don’t want it shared with the whole online world.

The message is basically there to remind folks to be considerate, and most people will. But you never know when somebody—perhaps that old coworker of yours who got fired over an email incident back at WidgeTech—is going to test the limits of social graces. Because Google+’s polite reminder may not dissuade everyone, if you post something of a sensitive nature, you can clamp down on casual sharing of it. To do so, click the little gray arrow in the upper-right corner of your post and choose “Lock this post.” That way, your post won’t include a Share link.

That means your friends can no longer share your post—at least not in the easy way they could before. But keep in mind that if you put something online, there’s always a way for someone to share it in ways you don’t want. Even if you disable sharing and comments and do your best to keep a post inside your selected circles, people can still share your stuff by:

So keep that in mind when you’re thinking about posting something. And if you come across a locked post, the person who wrote it is very firmly asking that you don’t share that joke, photo, or bit of humor with anyone else, even though you technically could.

Bottom line: If you really want to keep something private, don’t post it on Google+ or anywhere else online.

Not every post in your stream will be a winner, and some you might get downright sick of because they keep jumping to the top of your stream as they collect comments and +1s. That’s what that little arrow in the upper-right corner of each post is for—telling Google+ that a post is either too prominent or just plain bad, or that a person (probably someone who’s not in your circles) is continually shoving posts into your stream and you’d like it to stop.

Click that arrow to display the Options menu, where you can choose from the following:

Note there are two block buttons: “Report and block this person,” and “Block Jane Doe.” Click “Report and block” when that person has posted, commented, or otherwise behaved in a way you think is intentionally harmful, obnoxious, spam-like, or otherwise against the social norms, and you think they should be booted off the site for everyone’s benefit. Click “Block Jane Doe” when you just don’t want that person pestering you anymore.