Google+ has been in private beta for the last 3 months and is now moving into public beta, no invite required. Although it’s largely turned into a ghost town after much of the hype died down, it will be interesting to see what the new influx of people can do for the “not very social” social network. There are also new features being added and tweaked to bring some more excitement back to the platform. Although Google Apps accounts still aren’t invited and business pages don’t exist, Google+ should get more crowded and more involvement.
Some of the newly added features include: Hangouts on Android phones (with iOS coming soon), broadcast your hangout, added screensharing, sketchpad, Google Docs, public, topical Named Hangouts.
APIs and native search are also part of the new features announced on the Official Google Blog today along with opening the doors to the public.
The Google Mobile Blog posted a response with upcoming features to look forward to: Post to Google+ by SMS, improved +mentions (like @ on Twitter), +1 comments in your stream, edit your profile photo, custom tweak notifications, move the Google+ app to the SD card on your Android phone, Huddle is being renamed Messenger, and photo sharing is available from the mobile app.
I don’t think anybody is writing Google+ off any time soon and this recent infusion of going public and new features should help infuse some excitement by those already part of the crowd.