Google quickly rolled out “Communities” yesterday. “Communities” are Google’s answer to Facebook and LinkedIn Groups – a place where like minded members can gather to discuss and share information and resources having to do with the theme of that community.
To Find a Community
1. Log in to your G+ account
2. Among the navigational buttons on left-hand side of the page, you should see the new button for “Communities”. Click it to get started.
3. From this page, you can “discover” communities that Google displays, search for a community of interest, or create a new community.
To search, simply enter the appropriate theme or keywords in the search box and enter.
To create a new community, click either the red button in the upper right-hand side of the page, or the white button in the Green “Get Together with Google Communities” box.
4. Decide whether your community will be Public or Private. If it is Public, you can choose to set it so that anyone can join, or so that perspective members have to be first approved by a moderator. Private communities can be made searchable so that people can find it and ask for an invitation, or can remain completely hidden from searches.
Once you choose to make your group either Public or Private, it cannot be changed to the other at a later date – so choose carefully.
Click on the blue “Create a Community” Button.
5. Complete the information about your group
- Choose a name
- Select an image for the group
- Pick a tagline
- Fill out the group description
This information is all easily editable at a later time.
Click on “Done Editing”
6. That’s all there is to it! Send out your invitations, engage with other members, and enjoy!
It will be interesting to see what impact Communities has on Google+. I think Communities are a great addition and will make regular interaction much easier and Google+ a more social and user friendly platform.
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I’ll be excited to see how this turns out.
Hi Kelsey,
Me too! It seems as though it has potential to really change G+ – time will tell!