Google+ was the outsider from the start on the social media battle, but while everyone gambled on its failure, Google managed to turn things around and make it an interesting network to use.

Here are 8 reasons why we like using Google+:

  1. Its fresh, simple and functional. The new layout made it even better, more organized, while the bigger images remind us of Pinterest.
  2. It’s very useful for authors and bloggers and indexing of content has never been easier. After all, you will enrich the Google search of your name!
  3. Google Communities have been expanded and many users find the right one for their profession, or their hobby. It seems that users did find a reason to stay for a while on Google+.
  4. Google Hangouts is probably one of the main reasons that Google+ has become popular. It is the easiest way to have a group call with your coworkers, your friends, or even broadcast live to a large audience.
  5. The Local feature is like having a Foursquare inside Google+, which is great if you want to show to your friends your favorite spots in town. Time for businesses to turn to Google+ then!
  6. Images have never been better. Now that they are larger and more appealing they make you want to focus more on visual content. Even if your picture doesn’t look good, don’t worry. Google+ has automatic correction and filtering, which we wish it existed on Facebook, too.
  7. Its mobile version has also been updated and I must confess that I was positively surprised when I checked it. Images and links are larger, the app runs smoothly and everything is neat and simple.
  8. The improvement of the hashtags was also very important, since Google+ can indeed be a great source of content. The ability to search for hashtags through your post and find relevant content is very useful and there’s even automatic “hash-taging” if you didn’t create the appropriate tags.

To sum up, I believe that Google really found some gaps to fill in social networking, both at personal and professional level, and they should be praised for their persistence to turn Google+ into a competitive network. We can’t say that it’s still a big threat for Facebook and Twitter, but at least it’s on the right track!