The Google+ ecosystem as it is today is about to experience a great series of changes. With new Product Vice President Bradley Horowitz taking the reins, he will attempt to breathe new life into the social networking platform. The platform in its current state is used by many, and has already gone through several changes to get to where it now stands today. However, the service still struggles to gain widespread usage like other services from Google such as Maps, Chrome, or Gmail. Google+ has been the target of several criticisms, some of which surround the attempt to bolster the platforms usage by linking Google+ with the Youtube commenting platform. Users now post comments onto Youtube with their Google+ profile.
“Just wanted to confirm that the rumors are true — I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products! It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users” stated Bradley Horowitz on his Google+ page. His Google+ post seems to indicate that while the core functionality of the Google+ services people enjoy will remain in place, the method as to how they are delivered to end users may see change. This could mean the Google+ news feed we all see today could undergo changes to show more relevant postings of updates from the things we care about, while photo sharing could be segregated into another delivery method.
The other hugely popular Google Hangouts service would gain more attention as a means to connect users. This means even further improvements and additional features could come to Google Hangouts to increase the platforms usefulness as it is focused on as a separate communications method. Hangouts has already traversed a long way since its initial beginnings to bring us a one stop location for text messaging and telephony. The service is used between users for personal use as well as between several people for business communications. In the end, the Product Vice President hopes the coming changes will be received positively, and only hopes to boost the ecosystem’s usefulness and widespread acceptance.