What this book covers

Chapter 1, Joining Plus and What to Do First. This chapter introduces that excitement and how you can best join, and the kind of initial setup that guarantees a successful and fun-filled experience.

In it, we will:

Chapter 2, Sorting Everyone in to Circles. We will:

It's easy to add friends. Thumbnail photos are generated from your regular Google profile so if a photo is not attached to that yet, we won't see you. Not everyone will have a thumbnail ID yet, as shown in the following screenshot:

Chapter 3, Hanging Out. Other social media systems are adding video chat and related features. Plus was designed from the ground up with these fun and powerful things built in!

In this chapter, we will see (literally see) how Hangouts work.

Here I am checking my hair (uh huh) and preparing to hang out:

Chapter 4, Streaming. Two major topics join us in this chapter—Streams and Sparks.

In this chapter it's time to:

Chapter 5, Sharing Media. Plus gives us powerful built-in features for sharing photos, videos, animated gifs, and so on. We'll enjoy learning those in this chapter.

So here we:

Chapter 6, Mobile and Games. In today's world of smartphones, we take our social networks with us.

Together, we will be:

This is what Plus looks like on the free Android app (iPhone and others no charge too):

Chapter 7, Promoting on Plus the Right Way. Many people use social media, like Facebook, to promote themselves, their company, their organization, or a cause. This is fine as long as we do it right and don't offend anyone. If people get irritated by your actions, then they won't pay attention to you.

In this chapter, we learn to do it right, politely, and effectively by knowing about:

Appendix. This chapter provides helpful websites and other resources.