14 DAY TRIAL // It's no secret that Google is working on improving Google+ in several ways and has debuted over 100 changes and new features since the project was unveiled a few months ago. And it shouldn't be any secret, to anyone following Google, that it's experimenting with new features at this very moment.
Luckily, we have people like Matt Mastracci who like to snoop around Google code and uncover what's coming.
And there are plenty of things in the works if his findings turn out to be correct.
One small feature that should come in handy for those that use hashtags is auto-completion. Type in the '#' character and you'll get a list of suggestions which get refined as you continue to type.
These suggestions should be helpful when trying to use a popular hashtag as they should avoid misspelled hashtags. They also come in handy for frequently used terms.
A bigger change that may be coming is to the circles management, the actual, visual circles may be gone, replaced by a different interface.
At this stage, the new UI seems to be incomplete and does not work properly, so there's no way of knowing how it will end up looking, but the actual circles seem to be gone, for now.
There are more smaller changes, photos will now get a "link to this photo" option. There will be a 'Recommendations' link in the left sidebar, though it currently leads to a dead page.
An interesting privacy option is coming as well, users will be able to choose who can comment on public posts, enabling them to restrict the conversation to just their friends, even though the things they post are available for the world to see.
In order to expand the use of the Hangouts feature, Google+ may be getting a 'Hangout' link attached to every post. Finally, to clean up the conversation, you will be able to 'mute' a person rather than just one post.
The fact that Google is working on so many changes, some small some bigger, shouldn't be surprising, the company wants to get Google+ right for the very simple reason that it wants to build it into all of its products, Google+ will become Google, it's success will be the success of the company as a whole.
