Google on Friday released a laundry list of new features for its Google Plus (Google+) social networking applications for the iPhone and Android.
Features for both apps include easier ways to edit user profiles and publish new content, as well as support for Google Plus’s new “Communities” feature, which allows like-minded users to organize themselves into group pages about specific topics.
For Android, Google has begun making full-size backups of large photos taken by users through the app, and the app now supports Android’s “Photo Spheres,” its new panoramic image capturing tool in Android 4.2. Only users that have Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and over can take photos using this feature, but all users of Android versions 2.2 Froyo and up can view them.
For iPhone and devices that run the iOS operating system (iPad, iPod touch), the Google+ app now supports new gestures such as the ability to swipe through photo albums, tapping to make photos full size and includes a “pan zoom” photo scaling effect.
The move marks Google’s emphasis on becoming a major player in the mobile photo sharing market, coming on the heels of new photo filters for Twitter and Instagram, and a new iPhone app from Flickr.
