This Week In Search: July 8

Who says the summer months are always quiet?  It’s been another busy week, with lots of exciting search and digital news. This week, Jules Cowan-Dewar breaks down the top stories to catch you up.

Thoughts on Google +

Now that enough time has passed, the initial reviews of Google + are trickling in. While they range from the glowing to the terrible, there certainly isn’t a shortage of opinions online about Google +.

My personal feeling? I’ve had the opportunity to play around with Google + this week and my reaction is largely positive.

• I can see the value in an alternative to Facebook
• I really like the ”Circles” feature that allows you to divide friends into categories and to share certain information with selected people
• I really like the “Hangout” feature that allows you to video conference with multiple friends at once
• Like with most things, I see Google +’s success hinging on adoption. If my entire social network signed up, Google + would be a lot more appealing than it is with the 4 friends I currently have.

Obama’s Twitter Town Hall

The public was given the opportunity to ask President Obama 140-character-or-less questions via the social networking site. It’s hard to gauge the success of this kind of venture but if participation is any indication, 70,000 tweets spells W-I-N.

Full details about the commonly-asked questions, themes and answers can be found here.

Google’s New Look

The search engine king (queen?) debuted a new look last week with the ultimate aim of improving the user experience. With noticeable changes to their appearance, including a cleaner more streamlined homepage, results so far have been largely positive. The official Google Blog also hints at changes to come for Google Maps, Google Search & Gmail.

Facebook + Skype = Video Chat

Everybody’s favourite child genius, Mark Zuckerberg, announced on Wednesday that Facebook would be partnering with Skype to bring video chat to the 750 million users worldwide. Making less noise was Facebook’s announcement of the addition of a ‘Group Chat’ feature – something some see as a direct response to Google +’s “Hangouts”.