Google Plus has been completely redesigned and refocused

Numerous articles have been written about what went wrong with Google Plus, so I won’t go into detail here, but suffice it to say that Google put too much focus in the wrong places and not enough focus in the right places. After years of trying to muscle users into adopting and using the service, Google has started to back away from Google Plus in recent months, but that doesn’t mean it’s being killed off. In fact, the company just completely redesigned Google Plus, and has shifted the focus to user communities and interests. 

The newly redesigned Google+ is here. The company introduced a revamped version of the Google+ app and website that reorganizes the social network around its Communities and Collections features. The revamped Google+ emphasizes Communities and Collections, which the company introduced earlier this year. Communities is the network’s groups feature while Collections allow users to group posts into topic-based sections. This goal, Google says, is to make Google+ simpler and easier to use by reorganizing the network around its users’ interests. The Google+ website, iOS and Android app have also been redesigned to be faster and easier to use across different platforms and devices. “We’ve drastically simplified nearly every aspect of the product,” Google’s Luke Wroblewski, wrote in a post on Google+. “The new Google+ also makes it easier to post, search, connect, and keep up with great content in a fully redesigned home stream.” While it seems unlikely the latest redesign will be able to breathe new life into Google’s social network, Google+ has been successful in appealing to groups of users interested in specific topics so it’s not surprising they would choose to reorganize the service around these areas.