Tips and tricks for Google+

Google+ is expected to reach 10 million users soon, which isn’t bad considering it was released less than a month ago and is still invite-only. It is Google’s latest attempt to master the social media world, and it seems to be working.

Its dedicated users have created a guide to everything you need to know on Google+.

Here is Business Insider‘s ‘best tips and tricks on Google+‘ – 10 Things You Never Knew Were Possible On Google+:

• Receive Google+ notifications on your phone, even if you don’t use Android
• Create a “Drafts” circle for unfinished posts
• Mute notifications on one of your posts
• Formatting tips: bold, italic, underline, and more…
• Tag your Google+ pals in posts
• Mute posts that keep returning to the top of your stream
• Quickly move between posts in your stream (short cuts)
• Block Google from using your information to display targeted ads
• Conduct a search within Google+ (Chrome only)
• Import your Facebook contacts to Google+

Google+ is only the first step in Google’s social strategy, according to the search giant. It was compared to Facebook on first glance but users have since been enjoying additional features, such as ‘circles’ (which allows you to put your contacts into groups).

Facebook, possibly slightly worried about the Google+ take-up, has blocked Google’s contact export tool. Although, unsurprisingly, there seem to be ways around it if you run a Google search.

It is still a long way off Facebook’s (and Twitter’s) total user-base, but so far it seems to be creating quite a storm – using elements of both Twitter (you can ‘follow’ people that don’t follow you) and Facebook (status updates, chat etc), as well as search, video calling and so on to provide the ultimate social network.

Only time will tell but watch this space!