Google+
is having a bit of an identity crisis while its Mountain View owner
works out exactly what it wants to do with it. Until recently, the most
significant news about the struggling social network was that its
excellent Photos component was going to get spun out into a standalone project. It turns out Google+ now has a new sharing feature called Collections, and it looks a lot like Pinterest.
First uncovered by DroidLife tipster,
the new Collections feature, described as “part Pinterest, part
blogging,” enables users to create groups of photos, videos, and links
and then share them with other people in their Circles.
Google+
officially began rolling out Collections today. It lets any user
dedicate a Google+ page to the topic of their choosing, which others can
then follow. You can check out some of Google’s favorite new Collections
here. Google+ could certainly use a boost as it looks to make up ground
on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and the various other social sharing
apps. Although Google hasn’t shared any user numbers publicly, recent
estimates suggest the network has between 4 million and 6 million active users.
Compare
that to the 1.44 billion active monthly users that Facebook boasts, and
you can see the problem. Still, Google is unlikely to abandon Google+
completely — It’s a useful way of giving every Gmail and YouTube user an
identity on the Web, even if no one’s actually paying much attention to
the stream of posts that go alongside the profiles.
A splash page indicates Collections will reach all corners of the social network in time, but users on Twitter have reported seeing a few
public Collections. Now that it’s been released, it will be interesting
to see whether the Pinterest-style feature brings users back to
Google+.
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