Facebook and Google are going head to head with updates. Yesterday I wrote about some new updates which facebook appeared to be rolling out, and today they officially announced them.
Today as well, just in time for the f8 conference on Thursday, Google + announces some additional significant changes. Google+ is now officially out of field trial and is now in beta.
Here are some of the highlights from the post:
- Its open to anyone. If for some reason you wanted in and couldn’t find someone to get you in, well, now you can sign up on your own.
- They added a search bar at the top so you can now actually perform a search in the worlds largest search engines social network. Ironic that you couldn’t before.
- Hangouts on Air which now means while not necessarily able to participate in hangouts, you can watch them.
- They also added some “google Wave Like” features to Hangouts including sketchpad, sharing docs, and screen sharing.
I see significant applications here for businesses and expect Google+ for businesses to come out soon.
More about Google + Search from Search Engine Land