14 DAY TRIAL // Google promised to start making some changes to Google+, to address some of the main concerns, and it has already started to do so. The company has said that it will address two issues that users have pointed out.
First, users will be able to set their gender option to private, so only a few users or no one will be able to see it.
Second, users will be able to upload contact lists, in standard formats, and then pick the contacts they want to add to Google+ from that list.
"Google+ Profiles is launching a new privacy enhancement in response to user feedback," Frances Haugen, Google+ Profiles product manager, announced.
"Starting later this week, you will be able to set the privacy setting of your gender on your Google+ Profile just as you control other information about yourself," she added.
This change comes in response to some criticism that the gender choice was the only thing, apart from your full name, in a Google+ profile that could not be private.
Users that don't want their selection to be viewable by the world will have this option now. Google probably believed that people won't really care, since other would probably be able to figure out a person's gender from their name.
But the company has steered on the cautious side when it comes to privacy in Google+, so the move is in line with what's been doing so far.
"We’ve been listening to feedback from our users who want more flexible ways to find their friends on Google+," Google's Rohit Khare wrote.
"One of the most flexible tools is an address book uploader, and I wanted to share the good news that it will be rolling out to everyone over the next few days," announced.
Users will be able to upload contact lists, either in the CSV or the vCard format, to Google+. Many email providers and email clients have an export function and other services that function around contacts offer the same option. Except Facebook, of course.
"One thing about our uploader is that we won’t mix your imported contacts up with all of your other Google Contacts. We only store the ones that you put into your Circles," he explained.