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Google launches photo, badge updates to celebrate Google+ 2nd birthday

Google Plus Circles
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Detailed on Google+ as well as the Google+ developers blog, Google has rolled out some improvements to Google+ Photos in addition to new Follow buttons for pages, regular profiles and Google+ communities. Regarding the updates to Google+ Photos, the development team added the ability to move photos between albums. This could be ideal for grouping photos that have a specific theme or a specific person like a friend or family member.

The team also added a tool for downloading batches of photos and increased the speed of the upload tool when adding a large collection of high resolution photos. This addition comes approximately six weeks after Google improved the editing tools within the Photos section and increased cloud storage for large resolution images.

dt-follow-googleBeyond the Google+ Photos improvements, Google+ users can now embed a Follow button on their own site. The Follow button can also be used by Google+ page administrators that want to increase the number of people that see the site’s social updates.

The design of existing badges will be automatically updated to the new Follow button within the next 90 days. In addition, the +1 button and Share button will also receive a visual overall in the next few weeks.

If a Google+ user manages a Google+ community, a new Preview button is available as well. When a visitor presses the Preview button, a new tab will be opened and the community page will launch. The visitor can read the most recent posts and choose to join the community. Ideally, this will cut down on the number of people that join and subsequently leave a community if they can’t find any posts of interest. 

These additions launched exactly two years after the June 2011 launch of Google+, likely to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the upstart social network. By comparison, 7-year-old Twitter launched during June 2006 and 9-year-old Facebook launched during February 2004.

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