Google has not given up on the social media arena. The search engine giant bolstered Google+ with 18 new features announced Tuesday during a press event in San Francisco. Google+ now turns to the potentials of photos and videos as it introduced photo-enhancement features for its app and automatic video editing that allows users to share portions of clips complete with effects and sounds. The company also launched updates for Google Hangouts.
The search engine giant also announce that the user base of Google+ grew by as much 58 percent from 300 million to 540 million active users per month. The metrics include log-ins using Gmail, app users, and website visits. The company also disclosed that users of the service upload as much as 1.5 billion images a week.
"In the last four months, we pushed out 20 updates to Google+. But we're proud to announce that today, we're going to be introducing 18 more features," said Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of engineering at Google, during the event.
The new features of Google+ now makes life easier for editing, organizing, and saving photos and videos. The app for iOS devices will soon have background sync and backups of full size images so practically, images will have backup files as they are taken. Searching for images will also be easier as Google makes the system more intuitive, recognizing thousands of objects
Google also introduced Auto Enhance, Snapseed, Analog Efex Pro, and Auto Awesome.
"Auto Enhance improves each photo you add to Google+, and now you can now dial the enhancements up or down. If you're already processing your images elsewhere, you can choose to exempt an album entirely," Gundotra explained.
Snapseed has now its own high dynamic range or HDR Scape filter that allows users to create effects in a single tap. The Analog Efex Pro is another no-effort auto-enhancement feature that produces impressive results. Google introduced new techniques for Auto Awesome to make storytelling easier with the use of Action, Eraser, and Movie enhancements to help users make most of their creativity.
Alongside the photo and video enhancements, Google also introduced new features to Hangouts, including an SMS feature that allows users to text people, geo-location feature, and availability of HD Video Hangouts for all users.
The photo and video enhancements for Google+ will be fully rolled out this week.
