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Kevin Purdy
Beijing | Cambridge | Farnham | Köln | Sebastopol | Tokyo
Google+: The Missing Manual
By Kevin Purdy
Copyright © 2012 Kevin Purdy. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North,
Sebastopol, CA 95472.
O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional
use. Online editions are also available for most titles (safari.oreilly.com). For more
information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800.998.9938 or
[email protected].
Editor: Dawn Mann Cover Designers: Monica Kamsvaag and
Production Editor: Jasmine Perez Randy Comer
Proofreader: Nan Reinhardt Interior Designers: Ron Bilodeau and
Illustrations: Rob Romano J.D. Biersdorfer
Indexer: Ron Strauss
December 2011: First Edition.
Revision History for the 1st Edition:
2011-12-07 First release
See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781449311872 for release details.
The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Google+: The Missing
Manual and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their
products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book,
and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been
printed in caps or initial caps.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher
and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting
from the use of the information contained herein.
ISBN: 978-1-449-31187-2
[LSI]
Contents
The Missing Credits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
How Google+ Works. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
What You Can Do on Google+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
The Very Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
About the Online Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
Safari® Books Online. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
ChapTer 1
Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Signing In and Joining Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Fleshing Out Your Profile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
ChapTer 2
Managing Contacts with Circles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
How Circles Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Adding People to Circles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Creating Circles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Editing and Organizing Circles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Sharing Circles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
ChapTer 3
Streams, Sharing, and Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Viewing Your Stream. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
The Anatomy of a Stream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Writing a Google+ Post. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Choosing Who Sees Your Posts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Interacting with Posts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Editing, Deleting, and Controlling Your Posts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
ChapTer 4
Notifications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Where You Get Notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Controlling Which Notifications You Receive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Making Notifications Less Intrusive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
ChapTer 5
Sharing Photos and Videos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Viewing Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Sharing Photos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Getting Photos onto Google+. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Tagging Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Editing and Deleting Photos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Adjusting Overall Photo Settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Sharing Videos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
ChapTer 6
Hanging Out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Starting a Hangout. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Hanging Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Hangouts on Mobile Devices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Tips for Better Hangouts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
ChapTer 7
Searching and Sparks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Searching Google+. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Getting Better Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Saving Searches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Throw Your Post into the Mix with Hashtags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
ChapTer 8
Google+ Mobile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Getting Google+ onto Your Phone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Streams, Posts, and Circles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Viewing Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Starting a Messenger Session (Apps Only). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Mobile Notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Posting to Google+ via Text Message. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Sending Things to Google+ from Other Apps (Android Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
iv
ChapTer 9
Playing Games. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Getting into Games. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Starting a Game. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Joining a Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
v
The Missing Credits
About the Author
Kevin Purdy is a guy from upstate New York who some-
how convinced the founding editor of software and pro-
ductivity blog Lifehacker to take a chance on a young
newspaper reporter with a secret geek life. He blogged
at Lifehacker for over three years, and somehow man-
aged to write The Complete Android Guide during
that time. He now makes a living writing for whoever
will have his words, and doesn’t make much of a liv-
ing organizing TEDxBuffalo, obsessing over homemade
specialty coffee, and hosting the In Pod Form podcast.
He lives in Buffalo, NY, with his wife and two cats. Email: [email protected].
About the Creative Team
Dawn Mann (editor) is associate editor for the Missing Manual series. When not
reading about Google+, she beads, bikes, and causes trouble. Email: dawn@
oreilly.com.
Jasmine Perez (production editor) spends her free time cooking vegetarian
meals, listening to her favorite freeform radio station, WFMU, and going on
adventures whenever possible. Email: [email protected].
Cassandra Moffitt (technical reviewer) is the lead graphic designer at Going to
the Sun Marketing (www.gttsmarketing.com), a full-service marketing agency
with offices in New York and Montana. She enjoys car racing and all things tech
and gaming.
Nan Reinhardt (proofreader) is a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, who is
also a writer of romantic fiction. Her debut novel is due out in February 2012 and
she has two novels with her agent at Curtis Brown Literary Agency. In between
editing gigs, she is busy working on her fourth book. She blogs thrice weekly at
www.nanreinhardt.com. Email: [email protected].
Ron Strauss (indexer) lives with his wife in northern California at 2,300 feet.
When not indexing Missing Manuals, he moonlights as a musician (viola and
Native American flute).
Acknowledgments
Editor Dawn Mann is a rock, and she knows how to roll with both a fast-moving
subject and an occasionally sideways-running author. Cassandra Moffitt has
the sharpest eyes around when it comes to catching buttons, clicks, and overly
> clever site designs. Web-syncing software Dropbox kept the book’s chapters
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D Buying a Home: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner
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viii The MiSSing CrediTS
