Google Plus Communities is Coming Soon

[Sheryl Loch]

Saw the announcement today that Google Plus communities are being rolled out. These communities could also be called groups. They will allow you to join and post about a specific topic and the post will not show up in your general stream.

Ok, you may be allowed to make original post to the community page OR you may only be allowed to post comments. This will be determined by the community originator. They can make the community private or public.

How is this different than posting to one of your circles?

Because when you post to a public community, it may be visible to the public (if it is set to public). Whereas posting a message to one of your circles is only visible to people included in the circle – so you will not find more people interested in the topic because they can't see it.

I am in hopes that these community pages are better than the Facebook Groups pages. The FB groups were started by a gazillion people and then left to be spammed.

Starting one of these Google Plus Groups (Community) means you will need to devote time to moderate and make fresh relevant updates. If you think that you will just set one u and be famous…LOL!

I am sure we will see more about this as they roll it out!
Sheryl Loch

[Brian Hawkins]

I was just watching Google's YouTube video about them. http://youtu.be/lpUDWCSRQIU (Check out the new YouTube layout if you haven't already).

It could be a nice way of finding like-minded people to circle. I would consider starting a blogging community but the work involved gives me a headache just thinking about it.

I do hope Google doesn't allow people to just add us to communities without our permission. That's one think that drives me crazy about Facebook. I remove myself from Facebook groups several times a week; just before I unfriend the jerk that added me.

[Sheryl Loch]

I do NOT think they can auto add anyone. Google is smarter than that...they saw the Facebook fallout.

Some of these people have no freakin clue how much work could go into these communities. As I said on this G Plus post about communities.

I saw the video earlier today. They have a buttload of Youtube updates that came in today.

I got up for a webinar, the Communities news was breaking, had to upload a video, then chek on the communities updates, youtube updates were coming in & the Big guy of Google had a HoA from SMX. Damn, I am brain dead.

I did a bit of messing around in the communities. You know me, I saved 2 brain cells just in case. LOL

A couple of things I was not sure about – If Brand Pages could join communities and WTH were going to happen with notifications…

Yes, pages can join them if you are invited/approved or they are public.
I also saw that we can turn notifications On – Off. When you open the "Communities" icon, you see the ones you belong to & it has a RED notifications number, so no reason to fill my in box. I can just check in when I want to.

Pages can also comment and +1 post and comments of people who do not have the page circled. This is good for real pages that do not intend to spam…bad for communities that get spammers.

Hmmm, Fuzzy is looking for family friendly communities that will not be work to post on and can get noticed.

I did leave a comment as the Fuzzy page to see if I get kicked out for being a page. Hell, the community is "owned" by a Googler, figured that was a good test. LOL

I did a search for "Toys" in the communities…I do NOT think Fuzzy wants to join those listed. LOL

Lots of "Animal" – "animal lovers" communities, I may join one of those once I see which one is going good.

"Kids Crafts" only has a Wiccan community – WTF?

I'll keep checking on things and see how it goes.

Sheryl Loch

[Brad West]

I have thought long and hard about building a community on Google+ but after months of contemplation decided not to. There are tons of communities to choose from and it takes a lot of time to run a community properly. I see where some people have started a community and gave up and let them go, I didn't want to be one of those.

One thing that kind of bothers me is is the stream it just runs on like facebook, but on the bright side if you do want to find something you can search for it with an awesome search tool, Google+ is so searchable I love this feature. Facebook on the other hand has no content search what so ever.