14 DAY TRIAL // Google has finally acknowledged that it's working on a big social project, though it's still not calling it a social network. The company has been building it up in time, with smaller launches and changes, like the +1 button, but it is now ready to roll out the big core apps that make up Google+.
The most important, Google+ Circles is easy to understand, it's a way of managing and grouping your contacts that affects everything else related to Google+.
Google+ Sparks is a bit harder to explain though. At it's core, it's a sharing app with some discovery thrown in for good measure.
But it's different from any other sharing app out there in the sense that it enables you to talk about your interests with exactly the ones that share them.
"Healthy obsessions inspire sharing, and we’ve all got one (or two, or three...). Maybe it’s muscle cars, or comic books, or fashion, but the attraction is always the same: it comes up in conversation, we immediately jump in, and we share back and forth with other fans," Google wrote.
"The web, of course, is filled with great content—from timely articles to vibrant photos to funny videos. And great content can lead to great conversations," it added.
"We noticed, however, that it’s still too hard to find and share the things we care about—not without lots of work, and lots of noise. So, we built an online sharing engine called Sparks," it said.
There are two big sides to Sparks, both equally important. The sharing part is obvious, you find something you like and you share it with the ones that you know will like it as well.
But Sparks also has a discovery part, after you add your interests to app, you will start receiving great content from around the web based on those interests.
Google hasn't explained exactly how it does this, but it does have a great resource at its disposal, its search index. The other big source will likely be all of the +1 data that's been getting and which will likely increase as Google+ rolls out to more people.