Battle of the Sexes: Google Plus

Battle of The Sexes

(link to original post: http://goo.gl/GhCft )







Read This Article:  http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/google-plus-women/ 

Is Google Plus all dudes? I'm not a dude. I know lots of great female Google Plus users. Why do people feel that Google Plus is still just a giant sausage fest? Are there things that you would change about Google Plus to make this place more friendly or welcoming for female users? How can Google attract moms and wives onto Google Plus? Are there features like bookmarking boards that need to be added to Google Plus? How can Google Plus get teenage girls to join this network? 

I want to hear your opinions. I want to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly.   
This is the post that I want you to express yourself. Bring it. Share your opinions. Make your comments as long and detailed as you need to get your  point across. 

I want more women on Google Plus. I need more women on Google Plus. I feel like I'm drowning in men. 


*Tell me what the average Google Plus user can do to let the world know that Google Plus isn't all dudes.* 

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"It probably just needs a [user interface] overhaul,” says videogame entrepreneur Margaret Wallace. “It’s a UI thing.” Wallace says she’s a fan of Google+ and uses its video “hangouts” feature extensively, but that the social network’s interface reflects the techie roots of the Googlers who built it."


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posted by +Margie Hearron 

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Posted on : August 20, 2012

A new Google+ Page Manager for Oasis in the Stream

My name is , reall all about me on my profile. I will be regularly  creating content and videos such as this one for the site. If you have any questions for me or video requests that is relevant to Oasis In The Stream shoot me a message on Google+

If you have any ideas or things you would like to see from me in relevance to  don't hesitate to ask. 

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posted by:  

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Alright Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my touch-up

Do you use the photo albums in Google+? Perhaps you use Instant Upload from your phone to capture lots of memories, and later collect them into albums. Or you have a more traditional camera, and you upload pictures periodically. Or perhaps you take part in #BlastFromThePast and you're scanning all those photos from when you were 7... No matter what you do, here are a couple of tips for working with photos in Google+.

First, Google+ is pretty flexible about what format the pictures can be in. GIF, JPG, and PNG are popular formats that you may be familiar with, but you can also upload the RAW format that many cameras support - but Google may convert any of these formats to another format for display, and the results may not be as good as you'd like.

Remember that you can upload an unlimited number of photos - but the pictures can be no bigger than 2048 by 2048 pixels. This is about 4 Megapixels, using digital camera lingo. If you upload a larger picture, Google will resize it so the longest edge is 2048 pixels. While their algorithm is pretty good about scaling things, you may want to do some editing yourself.

Speaking of editing, there are some pretty good editing tools built into Google+. These are available from the Edit Photo button that is in the upper left corner of your pictures when you're flipping through your album. (This is sometimes known as the Lightbox View of your pictures.) Based on the old Picnik tools that worked with Picasa, you will need Flash to do the editing.  You can apply a number of special effects (sepia tones, funky colors, polaroid effects, and more), adjust the brightness, blur portions of the image, eliminate some blemishes, crop and rotate the picture, add text, and do other editing. When you're done, you can either save over the original, or save a copy.

When your photo is picture perfect, share it in an album... but don't be surprised if it shows up again in your stream hours or days later. When an individual photo gets it's first +1, it may be automatically shared to everyone permitted to see it - think of this as very positive endorsement of the picture.

Go ahead... take those amazing cat pictures and share them with the world. You know you want to.

How to use Ripples on Google Plus

Ripples

Ripples are the visual diagram of the shares of Google Plus posts. When you view Ripples, you get to see all the people that shared a post. You also will see how much of an influencer certain people were when they shared the post.

Small Tangent: To Mention or Not To Mention
Many people will try to tell you that you need to +mention the Original Poster or the Resharer of a shared post. You can +mention the Original Poster in a post if you want to. It's all up to you. You don't have to do anything.

There are no rules on Google Plus. As long as you do not steal posts or steal photos or go against the Terms of Service of using Google Plus, you can post however you choose.

You are free to use Google Plus as you choose, and no one has any right to force any rules or anyone's etiquette on any of you.  So if you don't want to +mention or tag a person to your reshare of a post, you don't have to. It's up to you. If you want to +mention or tag someone to your limited or extended circles, or public reshare of their post, that's fine. It's up to you. If you do mention the original poster, it can help the original poster to know about your reshare and allow the original poster to engage in comments on your posts if you mention them in the post. It's not a rule. It's strictly an optional thing. Again, it's up to you, the user, how you use Google Plus.


If a person post to Public, you will always be able to see Ripples for that person's reshare on the Ripples' page. Ripples only show Public shares of Google Plus posts.


Follow These Simple Steps To View Ripples:

1 Click on the drop-down menu on the post. The drop-down menu is located in the greyed circle with the upside down triangle to the right of any G+ post.
2 Select  "VIEW RIPPLES."
3 On the Ripples' page, zoom in or out to see your ripples.
4 Scroll through the list of people on the right section to see all the people that have shared a specific post and see links to view their reshares.

The video below shows you an example of how to use ripples. I think it's a good illustration to show you the basics about ripples. Usually I create my own videos, but I thought I would change it up a bit.
Thank "starienmarketing" for the video.
http://starien.com/
+Sean Rizvi
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posted by +Margie Hearron

original post on Google Plus: click here

Hash - Not Just for Breakfast

If you look at the Trending on Google+ list much, you'll notice that there are often a lot of trends that start with a tic-tac-toe sign. This symbol, sometimes called a pound or a hash mark, is used by Google+ users for a lot of different reasons. Let's take a look at how it is used, why you may want to use them, and what you need to do.

The hashtag was borrowed from Twitter, where people used it to discuss similar topics. As such, it created ad-hoc communities, and people would follow streams of these hashtags instead of needing to follow specific people. Google+ encourages this use of hashtags as well - searching for a hashtag will take you to posts that have this hashtag, and posting from that stream will automatically append the hashtag to your post as well, so future searches will also return your post.

This isn't as necessary with Google+, however, since posting to pages or shared circles can sometimes accomplish the same goal.  Even searches don't need the hashtag - you can just use normal words to describe your post and the power of Google search will index it correctly, but many people still use hashtags to help categorize their posts.

You will also see many themes that are posted with the same hashtag, and these themes will tend to trend. For example, a lot of people post cat pictures and jokes on Saturday, and these will get tagged with the hash #Caturday.

Using a hashtag is easy - while you are writing your post, in the body of the post itself, type a # mark, and then start typing the hashtag you want to use. A hashtag cannot have any spaces in it, so if you are using more than one word, run them all together. Many people capitalize the first letter of each word to make it easier to read. As you're typing, Google may suggest some other hashtags that match yours - feel free to select one of them, but they will be all in lower case.

You can add as many hashtags to your message as you like. If you are adding a lot, however, it is usually good form to put them at the bottom of your post, so they don't make the post itself difficult to read.

Don't overuse hashtags, however. Many people (myself included) don't like them, since they may clutter up a post. It can also be difficult to make sure you find the right hashtags to use - for example, should you tag your posts about the olympics with #Olympics, or #Olympics2012, or #London2012 or #LondonOlympics, or... So if you're going to use hashtags, be selective in how you use them. Remember that you don't need a hashtag to find a post later - Google indexes every word of your post, so you don't need to talk about the Olympics, and gold medals, and perhaps your favorite sport, and then have to apply a hashtag for each one as well.

Hashtags are an easy to use tool in Google+, and if not overused, can make following selected themes and topics a lot easier. So go ahead, have some hash with your Plus.