Google has just announced an amazing user interface revamp of its answer to social networking, Google+. Among the improvements offered is the inclusion of a special “dynamic ribbon” at left, replacing the classic top menu approach. Users can drag and reposition items on this ribbon at their convenience, which is a huge step forward into customizing the site-as-online-application experience, enabling the user to have her most often used features more accesible.

In addition, the overall new user interface of Google+ looks well thought out, uncluttered and really nice. Google+’s Hangout function — the social network’s trademark resource of shared videoconferencing — is also prominently located at the right side of screen, where Facebook users are already used to see friend’s dynamic updates and chat windows.

At today’s date, Google claims to have more than 170 million users signed up (Facebook, in comparison, has roughly 850 million users worldwide). However, based on my own experience, most of those 170 million claimed by Google must be one-timers who signed up for the service and never came back. Only those who are diehard geeks have stuck as active users. And a social network without users and its consecutive connections is a technical fail regardless of how you skim it, or how many bells and whistles load into it. Perhaps Google+ coming late to the social networking party have cost them big time. Will these changes be enough to pull people back into Google+? Not while most of my friends still are too comfortable using Facebook, with its serious UX faults and all. And that’s a pity.

Source: The Next Web