One minor, yet seamingly very important change that has come to Google+ recently is that when looking at a profile, yours or anyone else’s, the menu bar has moved to the top of the page! Previously, if you were to have gone to my Google+ profile page, you would have seen my cover photo of LEGO farmers, with my profile image superimposed along with some brief biographical information. Below that was a menu bar with links to About, Posts, Photos, YouTube, +1’s and Reviews, and the option to view your profile as Yourself or Public.
All of those options have now been moved above the cover photo.
They’re located just below the black Google menu bar and white Google search area, but as you scroll down the page, the new About menu stays at the top of your screen along with a condensed version of your cover photo and profile pic.
Here’s what it looked like before:
And here’s what it looks like now:
What’s more, when you scroll down, the new About menu adds the G+ Logo and Home menu to the left, your notifications icon to the right, as well as the Google+ Hangouts icon, keeping these options and indicators readily available, even if you’re well down the page within someone’s posts.
This is the kind of improvement and change that other platforms are lacking, and one of the things that sets Google+ apart. Google has made it a point to regularly review their social network, to listen to users, and to look for ways to make it better, even if it’s a small adjustment. Last week, for instance, we saw new notifications being implemented.
As I said, it’s a minor change – moving a menu bar higher up and giving it a degree of stickiness – but I think it’s a tremendously insightful change to improve usablity and access, and I’m very pleased to see Google making constant improvements to the platform. Don’t you agree?
