Google+ has been available for about three months to those with invites now, and Google claims to have made 100 improvements to the service during that period – quite a feat. But now Google+ is getting ready for the bigtime with it hitting a Beta release (and remember GMail was beta for years).
Along with the beta release, Google+ gets a search function (I know!), as well as various features for Hangouts – the relaxed multi-person video chat service. They’ve added Hangout support as an Android app with iOS support on the way, but even more interesting is the ability to go “on air”. Using this people can still chat with up to nine others involved, but with the ability for anyone to watch passively. This has great applications for interactive livestreaming – where a live debate between people at different locations can be broadcast to an audience across the globe. It’s social application may be more limited, but it sounds a fantastic tool for education and discussion. They’ve also released an API for Hangouts for other services to make use of its functionality – something I see many doing for their on air service.
These improvements have also coincided with Google+ being opened up to the world at large, with no need for an invite anymore – it sounds like Google thinks it has done the stress-testing, and are ready to take on Facebook, Twitter, Linked.In and even Microsoft/Skype with the service.
And to publicise the opening of its doors, they’ve made a rather simple but effective ad on the Google.com homepage of a big arrow pointing up to the information bar at the top containing the service.