Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [28]
Posts specifically shared with you. These are posts where people either selected your name in the +Add box or mentioned you in the post (see Mentioning People in Posts). You’ll see these posts in your main stream, too.
One-sided posts. As you’ve learned, the whole circles concept is a two-way street: You can add people to circles, and they can add you to circles. If you haven’t added Bruce to any of your circles but he’s put you in one of his, when he writes a post or shares someone else’s post (see Sharing Others’ Posts), it’ll show up in this stream.
Your Incoming stream will quickly get cluttered with posts by people you don’t know, people who post too much stuff to too many people, and folks you haven’t added to a circle. You might think that perusing this stream is a good way to find people and add them to your circles, but there’s a specific section of the Circles page (“People who have added you”) that serves this purpose far better; see Adding People to Circles for the details. So, overall, the Incoming stream isn’t terribly useful for anything besides killing time.
Interacting with Posts
NOW THAT YOU’VE SET up some circles and learned how to post to them, it’s time to find out what you can do when you see stuff you like in your stream.
TIP
If you see something you don’t like in your stream, Google+ gives you a few different ways to respond. See Blocking, Muting, and Reporting Posts for details.
Other people’s posts are just like yours: they include some text, perhaps some mentions, and maybe an extra like a link, video, photo, or location. Hopefully you find some of them interesting—perhaps interesting enough to +1, comment on, or share that material with your own circles. The following sections explain each option.
The +1 Button
Giving someone’s post a +1 (pronounced “plus one”, just like it looks) is the equivalent of a thumbs-up, a laugh with a smile, or a knowing nod—just a quick acknowledgement that you think the post is good, funny, poignant, worthwhile, or right up your alley. (The box on The +1 explains where the term “+1” came from.)
To give a post a +1, click the +1 button below the body of the post. When you do, you see a little animation that “rolls over” the total number of +1s that post has received, and the +1 button turns blue. If you’re the first person to give the post a +1, the phrase “You +1’d this” appears below the +1 box. If others have already registered their +1 sentiments, you see a number below that box indicating the total number of +1s (“+24,” for example).
Other people who look at the post are able to see that you’ve given it a +1. To see who liked a post, click the blue +# link, and Google+ displays the little pop-up shown below.
Viewing other people’s +1s
You might remember from the signup process that you could +1 items on pages outside Google+, and how that would lead to customized advertising (Signing In and Joining Up). And, as you’ve just read, clicking +1 while on Google+ is a kind of stamp of approval. So where do all these +1 clicks end up? In a special section of your Profile page, and on everybody else’s Profile pages, if they’re made public.
If you want to show off your +1s, you have to edit your profile and make the +1 section of your profile visible: Head to your Profile page, click Edit Profile, click the +1’s tab, and then turn on the “Show this tab on your profile” checkbox. Once that’s done, folks who view your profile can view the things you’ve given a +1 to: web pages other than Google+ (by clicking a +1 button in a Google search result or on the page itself) and posts and photos on Google+.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: THE +1
Where did the term “+1” come from?
Google+ includes a +1 button for a few different reasons, all of them geeky.
In role-playing games, dating back to the penand-paper version of Dungeons & Dragons, a