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the stream aren’t simply in chronological order (though newer posts are generally near the top of the list). Nope, Google+ deems some posts more important than others and bumps them up in the stream. Which ones? Google hasn’t given away the exact formula it uses, but posts that have a lot of comments (Commenting), have received quite a few +1 votes (Interacting with Posts), and have been shared for greater exposure (Sharing Others’ Posts) tend to move up the list. And any post that specifically mentions you jumps up to a high spot in your stream. But even posts that pick up continual clicks and attention slide down the stream after a while. Commenting explains posts in more detail.

TIP

You can scroll through the posts in a stream in several ways: by using your mouse to drag your browser’s scrollbar, pressing your keyboard’s up and down arrow keys or Page Up and Page Down keys, or even by hitting the J and K keys (see The Notifications Panel for more keyboard shortcuts).

Main Stream vs. Circle Streams

The main stream is the one you see immediately after you log into Google+, or when you click the Home button (Viewing Your Stream). In the center are posts from everybody in all your circles. You can tell you’re looking at your main stream because the word “Stream” appears in red on the left of the page, and in black at the top of the page (circled on The Anatomy of a Stream).

The big difference between your main stream and the streams for your various circles is which posts you see: Your main stream includes posts by all the people in your circles, while the stream for a specific circle only includes posts by the people in that circle. Another difference is what appears on the right side of the page. When viewing your main stream, here’s what appears in the right-hand column:

An In your circles section that includes thumbnails of your friends’ profile photos, with a “View all” link beneath them. Clicking a person’s image takes you to their profile, while clicking the “View all” link zips you to the Circles page (How Circles Work).

A Suggestions section that includes thumbnails of people Google+ thinks you might want to add to your circles. These folks can appear for a few different reasons: You’ve contacted them via Gmail, friends in your circles have added them to their own circles, or they live in the same area or have worked for the same company as you, for example. (They’re the same suggestions you see in the “Find people” section of the Circle page.) If you see someone you know and want to quickly add them, simply mouse over the “Add to circles” box under their name, and a small box listing all your circles appears. Scroll through and turn on the checkboxes for the circle(s) you want to add her to (or click Create new circle), and then simply mouse away when you’re done.

The Send invitations section includes a button for sending invitations to friends who aren’t on Google+ yet. The box on Inviting Friends has the details.

The Hangouts section is related to, well, hangouts, which you’ll learn about in Chapter 6.

The Games section (which may or may not show up) shows you several of the games that you can play on Google+. Chapter 9 has the skinny on Google+ games.

The Google+ Pages section links to a spot where you can create a Page for a business, brand, organization, or another public entity. You can find more info about Pages on this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds.

NOTE

Google+ is constantly changing. This chapter describes how the streams pages looked while this book was being written, but it’s possible you’ll see different things on the right side of your stream pages.

Click the name of a circle on the left side of the Stream page, and the page will change in a few major ways. Most importantly, the center column now shows only posts by people in that circle.

On the right side of the stream page, a few other things have changed, too. The top item is now specific to the circle you selected: It includes the name of the circle, how many people are in it, the