Learn to chat on Google Plus
HOW CAN I CHAT WITH MY FRIEND ON GOOGLE PLUS?
Now that some of my friends and colleagues are onGoogle Plus, I want to be able to have chat windowsopen so we can collaborate, or talk about the latestTV show. Does G+ have this instant messaging (IM)capability?Dave's Answer:Google Plus most definitely has this capability and itappears to have inherited it from the Google Chatcapability that was integrated into Google Mail along time ago. In fact, if your friends or colleaguesare on Gmail and you're in G+, you can chat withthem while waiting for them to get their invite to theG+ world!This means that if you're at all used to Gchat, thenyou're ready to go. If not, well, it's pretty easy tofigure out.To get started, look on the lower left of your GooglePlus home page. You should see something like this:google plus configure chat 1Click on "Chat with people on Google+" and after amoment or two your list of friends and colleagueswill show up, with a green circle indicating they'reavailable for text chat and a small green videocamera icon indicating you can video chat with them(if you have video capabilities yourself):google plus configure chat 2One super nice capability of Google+ Chat is that youcan limit who sees you as available for discussion byspecifying which Circles get that information.Awesome!To change this setting, move your cursor to the topright of the "chat" area and look for a subtle menuindicator button (a tiny downward pointing triangle)to appear. Then click on it:google plus configure chat 3Click on "Circles" to see just what a great availabilityfeature they've added:google plus configure chat 4As you can see, I'm going to only advertise myavailability for chat known to the people who are inmy Friends circle. Hey, that's the entire point of G+,so I really do encourage you to organize yourconnections on G+ so you can do the same...Once I'm done specifying which Circle or Circles I wantincluded, I click on "Enable Chat" and I'm good to go!Let's tweak things just a bit more, however. Just tothe right of the "Available" indicator (and note that Iget the green video camera icon indicating I amavailable for a video chat) there's another tiny greydownward pointing triangle. Click on it and a menupops up:google plus configure chat 5Choose "Chat settings" and you'll see...google plus configure chat 6Interesting options here, but click on the link "Verifyyour settings" to make sure everything's workingproperly with Google chat / G+ chat:google plus configure chat 7Here you can see that my video camera is workingfine, though having back lighting makes it easy forme to have a witness-protection-program-stylesilhouette, not so good for an actually face-to-faceconversation! I'm also talking so you can see that thelittle indicator just above "Mic indicator" isn't empty.That's good.It all looks good. Now, to initiate a text chat!To do that, I simply find a friend who is available(denoted by the green circular icon next to theirname) and click on their name. The result is a smallpop-up window on the lower right of the page. A fewback-and-forth messages with my friend Chris andhere's what I see:google plus configure chat 8Notice that I'm typing into the bottom portion, aboutto send "got that. hope it's all going well, though..."Simple, straightforward, and you're ready to chatwith your friends and colleagues, whether it's aboutsome cool new TV show you're both watching or thelatest drama in the office!
Now that some of my friends and colleagues are onGoogle Plus, I want to be able to have chat windowsopen so we can collaborate, or talk about the latestTV show. Does G+ have this instant messaging (IM)capability?Dave's Answer:Google Plus most definitely has this capability and itappears to have inherited it from the Google Chatcapability that was integrated into Google Mail along time ago. In fact, if your friends or colleaguesare on Gmail and you're in G+, you can chat withthem while waiting for them to get their invite to theG+ world!This means that if you're at all used to Gchat, thenyou're ready to go. If not, well, it's pretty easy tofigure out.To get started, look on the lower left of your GooglePlus home page. You should see something like this:google plus configure chat 1Click on "Chat with people on Google+" and after amoment or two your list of friends and colleagueswill show up, with a green circle indicating they'reavailable for text chat and a small green videocamera icon indicating you can video chat with them(if you have video capabilities yourself):google plus configure chat 2One super nice capability of Google+ Chat is that youcan limit who sees you as available for discussion byspecifying which Circles get that information.Awesome!To change this setting, move your cursor to the topright of the "chat" area and look for a subtle menuindicator button (a tiny downward pointing triangle)to appear. Then click on it:google plus configure chat 3Click on "Circles" to see just what a great availabilityfeature they've added:google plus configure chat 4As you can see, I'm going to only advertise myavailability for chat known to the people who are inmy Friends circle. Hey, that's the entire point of G+,so I really do encourage you to organize yourconnections on G+ so you can do the same...Once I'm done specifying which Circle or Circles I wantincluded, I click on "Enable Chat" and I'm good to go!Let's tweak things just a bit more, however. Just tothe right of the "Available" indicator (and note that Iget the green video camera icon indicating I amavailable for a video chat) there's another tiny greydownward pointing triangle. Click on it and a menupops up:google plus configure chat 5Choose "Chat settings" and you'll see...google plus configure chat 6Interesting options here, but click on the link "Verifyyour settings" to make sure everything's workingproperly with Google chat / G+ chat:google plus configure chat 7Here you can see that my video camera is workingfine, though having back lighting makes it easy forme to have a witness-protection-program-stylesilhouette, not so good for an actually face-to-faceconversation! I'm also talking so you can see that thelittle indicator just above "Mic indicator" isn't empty.That's good.It all looks good. Now, to initiate a text chat!To do that, I simply find a friend who is available(denoted by the green circular icon next to theirname) and click on their name. The result is a smallpop-up window on the lower right of the page. A fewback-and-forth messages with my friend Chris andhere's what I see:google plus configure chat 8Notice that I'm typing into the bottom portion, aboutto send "got that. hope it's all going well, though..."Simple, straightforward, and you're ready to chatwith your friends and colleagues, whether it's aboutsome cool new TV show you're both watching or thelatest drama in the office!
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