Google+ is looking to take on Facebook, which is used by more than 650 million people worldwide, and is so far doing so by making preexisting Google products more social.

Google+ is made up mainly of three products -- Circles, Sparks and Hangouts. These are the first three items a Google+ user sees on the network's "welcome" page.

Circles allows Google+ to sort those a user follows on the service into custom groups -- family, friends, co-workers and anything else someone can come up with. Contacts can be in multiple Circles and a user can follow a person who doesn't follow them back -- a Twitter like move and something you can't do in Facebook.

When a user shares a photo or link or a burst of text on Google+, he or she can share what the post with the public or specific Circles.

Sparks is essentially Google News made social, and put into the Facebook-like layout of Google+.

Sparks allows users to set topics and check out news sorted to their tastes -- rather than going to Google News and seeing news coverage in topics sorted by Google itself.

When a user is looking at Sparks, he or she might see a news item worth sharing with a few friends, but not everybody. Using Circles, news items from Sparks can be shared to one person, one Circle or publicly.

Hangouts is a group video chat feature that allows one user to start a video chat session -- a Hangout -- and other users from their Circles of friends can pop in and chat as they see fit. A user can start a hangout open to specific Circles, all Circles or even specific people.

Again, this isn't necessarily new for Google -- it's been doing video chatting for a while now with video chats in Gmail and its Google Talk service.

The new part here is the spontaneity that Google has built into Hangouts with friends dropping by unexpectedly -- something that was a lot more fun than I expected it would be. And, again, this is an example of Google taking technology it already has and making it more social.

And, of course, Google+ has a photo sharing section -- which is the Google-owned Picasa Web photo album service -- built into the social network to make sharing, tagging and sorting albums more social as well.

As Google+ grows (it still isn't open up to the public) the addition of new features will continue, Google said. Already, there are rumblings that games, apps and business pages will make their way into Google+ with a social spin.

I'd say a safe bet would be that Google will eventually integrate its Groupon challenger into Google+ as well. Facebook is already doing that and if Google wants to compete it'll need to offer similar enticement to its users.

By going with what Google knows and is already successful at -- video chatting, organizing contacts and delivering news content -- Google+ is also hoping to correct the missteps that came with last year's Google Buzz product.

Buzz was a Gmail add-on that offered up a Twitter-esque platform to share thoughts, links and photos, with a user's email contacts. The social networking tool was riddled early on with privacy problems, but Google made changes and eventually found itself in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that set new rules on how the search giant handles the sharing of its users information.

With lessons learned, hopefully, Google has rearmed and is at it again, looking to dominate in social media the way it does in search and in smartphone operating systems with Android -- the most popular mobile OS in the world.

In the video below, we give you a quick rundown of Google+ as it stands today.

As of now, nobody can say for sure whether or not Google+ will push Facebook aside as the leading social network. Google+ hasn't even been out for a week yet and still has some maturing to do before it can compete with all that Facebook offers.

The one thing that is for sure is that social networks are only worth as much as the people who use them.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Twitter.com/nateog

Image: A Google+ Hangout video chat session in action. Credit: Armand Emamdjomeh / Los Angeles Times

Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday that the world's most popular social network will announce "something awesome" next week.

On Friday, press invites and a Facebook event page for the July 6 announcement went out and the website TechCrunch reported that "something awesome" might end up being a new video chat feature built in partnership with Skype, the popular video chatting and Internet calling service that Microsoft bought for $8.5 billion in May.

If that's the case, the move would come at an interesting time for Facebook. Google launched Google+ this week in a bid to counter Facebook's social networking dominance.

And while Google+ doesn't offer too much that Facebook doesn't match, it does have a feature called Hangouts where Google+ users can initiate group chat sessions and friends on the service can drop by spontaneously.

Currently, people looking to video chat with their Friends have to leave Facebook to do so -- heading to Skype, Apple's FaceTime software, Google Talk and now Google+ Hangouts.

We won't know until next week whether TechCrunch's report, which cites unnamed people with knowledge of such an agreement between Facebook and Skype, is true or whether Facebook+Skype will go head to head with Google+ Hangouts.

But the move would make sense for Facebook both in fending off Google and strengthening its ties with Microsoft -- another Google rival -- which includes integration between Facebook and Microsoft's Bing search engine.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Image: A screenshot of the Facebook event page for the social networks new product announcement next week. Credit: Facebook

John Green's novel "The Fault in Our Stars" is a runaway success -- even though basically no one's ever read it. 

The book, still unfinished and almost a year from release (tentatively May 2012), is nevertheless the single bestselling book on Amazon.com and No. 2 on BarnesandNoble.com. 

That unusual type of pre-publishing success is being attributed to the 33-year-old author's savvy use of social media to promote the still inchoate book. Green, who has 1.1 million followers on Twitter, 560,000 subscribers on YouTube and hundreds of thousands more on Tumblr, Facebook and a forum called YourPants.org, has been aggressively advertising the $9.89 proto-book, offering every pre-release buyer a signed copy.

He has read the first chapter of the book live over the Web, encouraged his followers to try their hand at designing a cover for the book (dozens have) and even asked them to vote on the color of Sharpie pen he should use to do the wrist-cripplingly huge numbers of signings (green is winning).

As our intrepid book blogger Carolyn Kellogg observes, the phenomenon of lesser known authors hitting the charts before they're released seems to be gaining steam:

It's interesting that Green's "The Fault in Our Stars" and "Go the F-- To Sleep" [the potty-mouthed children's story] by Adam Mansbach both hit on No. 1 on Amazon's bestseller list on the basis of preorders alone, and are pretty much unknown quantities. That's because publishing has been saturated in recent years by sure bets -- and bestseller lists have been dominated by popular series books. Think Stieg Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and its sequels, the "Twilight" series by Stephenie Meyer, and the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. Although Green's fans know they like his work, he's not continuing an old story; these two books both hit No. 1 without readers ever getting ahold of them.

The snail-mailboxes of technology reporters are constantly crammed with books offering the secret to social media marketing, using Twitter to get rich and generally lighting up the Internet with your product. But Green's approach seems to distill it into a single sentence:  Work hard making stuff people like and chat with them online while you're doing it.

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-- David Sarno

Image: Temporary cover of Green's book.  Credit: Amazon.com

Go Daddy Group Inc. has been sold to a group of private equity firms in a deal valued at $2.25 billion.

The purchase, which includes assumption of the company's debt, was announced Friday afternoon by Go Daddy and the group of firms, made up of KKR & Co., Silver Lake Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures.

"What these guys see is a company with a lot more potential internationally and more potential to make partnerships and acquisitions," Bob Parsons, the company's chief executive and founder, said. "They'll help us finance and they'll help us recruit talent."

Though the Scottsdale, Ariz., company is already the industry leader in domain registration, a person familiar with the negotiations said the investment group is excited about the growth potential of Go Daddy's other services, such as Web hosting and online marketing.

From 2009 to 2010 the company's sales grew by 25% to $947 million, and the company projects its figure for 2011 to be $1.1 billion.

Go Daddy became the world's largest domain registrar after it began airing racy Super Bowl commercials featuring bikini-clad Go Daddy Girls.

Recently, Silver Lake soldcommunications company Skype Global to Microsoft Corp. for $8.5 billion after purchasing it from EBay for about $2 billion two years ago.

TCV, which has not previously worked with Silver Lake or KKR, recently led a group of firms on a $135-million investment in Facebook.

Silver Lake and KKR have previously worked together, buying Avago Technologies in 2005 and helping it go public in 2009.

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-- Salvador Rodriguez

twitter.com/sal19

Image: A screen shot of auto racer Danica Patrick in a Go Daddy commercial during Super Bowl XLV in 2011. Credit: GoDaddy.com

Not even a week old, Google+ is a work in progress, and Google is making changes to the social network with the intention of improving it before it goes public -- which includes closing up a privacy loophole that has left some users a bit confused.

A main feature of Google+ is the ability to share with set "Circles" of friends -- such as just co-workers, just family, or just old school buddies.

But the privacy of sharing to Circles was called into question earlier this week when it was discovered that anyone can share publicly a post that was meant to be private by its original sender.

Google got the message and is working on a fix that should roll out over the next week that will keep intended items private, said Kelly Ellis, a software engineer at the Mountain View, Calif., company who is working on the new social network.

Ellis announced the change in a video shared publicly Friday on Google+, while also mentioning changes to what shows up at the top of a user's "stream" of posts from friends.

"We're making changes all the time but today we wanted to call out two changes in particular," Ellis said. "First, while many of you loved the option to share others' posts, some of you weren't quite sure how it worked. Commenting and sharing on posts can always be disabled and the next time you post you'll see a tip that describes how to do this.

"And starting next week limited posts will not be shareable publicly. This is really important to us. On google+ you should be in control of who sees your posts."

Users can disable the resharing of their posts by clicking a small grey arrow in the corner of a post to bring up a menu that gives them the option to "disable reshare."

"Second, while many of you love the constant activity in your streams some of you are seeing the same posts again and again," Ellis said. "We hear you and we're rolling out a few experiments that display posts with activity from the people you're close to."

In the video, Ellis didn't explain how Google+ would be figuring out who a user is close to or not -- which could possibly result in another privacy concern if left unexplained when the updates arrive. A Google spokesman said the search giant declined to go into detail about the experimental upcoming feature.

"We're rolling these changes out over the long weekend so expect to see them soon," she said. "Thanks again for all the great feedback –- keep it coming."

[Updated 2:48 pm.: This post was updated to add a comment from a Google spokesman who said the company isn't yet talking about how an upcoming experimental feature will work. The upcoming feature will sort items shared into the Google+ Steam by who a user is "close to."]

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twitter.com/nateog

Image: An example of the menu a Google+ user can use to disable resharing of posts, before a fix comes next week that will automatically disable the sharing of all private posts. Credit: Google

Google+ users may be able to get their game on soon.

Parts of the code behind Google's latest social network found by Engadget seem to indicate that Google+ has been built to be compatible with social games.

The section of the code discovered reads "have sent you Game invites and more from Google+ Games," according to the website.

Though Google did not address the strand of code directly, the company did say in a statement, "Google+ is an ongoing project and this is just the beginning. We plan to add a lot of features and functionality to Google+ over time. We're just excited to get started."

With Google+, the tech company is attempting to compete with social network giant Facebook. Over the last few years, social gaming has been an important part of Facebook's revenue stream and led to users spending more time logged into Facebook each day.

The social gaming market was worth nearly $1.5 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach almost $4 billion by 2015, according to a report by Business Insights, an analysis firm.

Google+'s code also seems to indicate that the service may introduce a questions feature in the future, which could end up adding a function similar to website Quora, Engadget reported.

The social network launched Tuesday and put a halt on its invite-only entry Wednesday. Google+, which is still in a field test, is also expected to be opened to developers soon.

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-- Salvador Rodriguez
Twitter.com/sal19

Image: A screenshot of Google+'s homepage. Credit: Google

Google Inc. is in preliminary talks to buy online video pioneer Hulu, people familiar with the situation said.

Hulu has begun meeting with potential buyers including Google, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. to drum up interest in a sale, said these people, who requested anonymity because the discussions are confidential.

The presentations to the potential suitors are a first step as Hulu's owners weigh whether to sell the site after having received an overture from Yahoo.

Hulu's financial advisors, Morgan Stanley and Guggenheim Partners, set up the meetings with media, technology and communications companies.

The technology heavyweights are seeking to capitalize on the widespread popularity of online video and position themselves to reach the growing number of viewers who watch television shows, movies and short videos on computers, mobile devices and Internet-connected television sets.

Hulu's rights to the current season's TV shows have drawn interest from Google and Yahoo, in part because these popular programs have attracted more than 600 advertisers -- including such major brands as McDonald's, Johnson & Johnson and Toyota. Indeed, the site expects to bring in $500 million in subscription and ad revenue this year.

Google, which has had a testy relationship with Hollywood, is making a major push to add professionally produced content to its mix of user-created videos on YouTube. It has hired industry veterans to help the Internet search giant make inroads and strike deals.

Yahoo is crafting its own strategy of bringing more premium content to its popular portal. Microsoft has had success offering access to movie subscription service Netflix Inc., dominant sports cable channel ESPN and the Hulu Plus paid offering to users of its Xbox game consoles.

Read more of our post on Company Town.

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Image: Hulu's website, Hulu.com, on an HP TouchPad. Credit: Hulu/Hewlett-Packard

Apple is facing a backlash from some vocal professional video editors who don't like the massive changes ushered in by its new Final Cut Pro X software, and Adobe is looking to cash in.

On Friday morning, Adobe Systems announced an "upgrade program" for those who've purchased any version of Apple's Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer -- the two leading video editing programs -- and are looking to try out Adobe's Premiere Pro software.

Adobe has even launched a website and series of video tutorials dedicated to explaining why filmmakers, journalists and media creatives should move over to Premiere Pro that proclaims: "You're a pro. Make sure you're toolset is too."

To get editors to make the switch, Adobe is offering a 50% discount on its Premiere Pro CS5.5 application and its Creative Suite CS5.5 Production Premium bundle of apps, which also includes the latest versions of its computer graphics software After Effects, online animation tool Flash Professional and photo and graphic editing mainstay Photoshop, among other apps.

Final Cut Pro X sells for $299.99, which is a huge drop in price from the $1,000 the Final Cut Studio of apps used to cost for previous versions of Apple's video editor and one of the things supporters of the new software point to as a step forward in the high-cost video editing field.

Adobe's Premiere Pro CS5.5, as a standalone application, sells for $799, or $399.50 at half price. Creative Suite CS5.5 Production Premium normally sells for $1,699, but with the 50% promotion, Final Cut Pro or Avid users can get the bundle for $849.50.

Avid Media Composer is the most expensive software of the three and sells for between $2,295 and $2,495.

Adobe, based in San Jose, said the 50% offer is set to expire on Sept. 30.

[Updated July 2, 1:21 p.m.: A previous version of this post incorectly said that Adobe's Creative Suite CS5.5 Production Premium software bundle included Dreamweaver and InDesign. It does not.]

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Image: Adobe's website courting Final Cut Pro and Avid users. Credit: Adobe Systems

Nortel Networks Corp.'s highly coveted mobile tech patents have a new owner and it isn't Google.

It's Apple and Microsoft, along with Research In Motion, Sony, EMC and Ericsson.

The six companies teamed up to buy the Nortel patents as a group, together spending $4.5 billion for a cluster of more than 6,000 patents and patent applications that many consider crucial to the future of mobile computing technologies.

The patents cover wireless technologies used in phones and tablet computers, wireless 4G data transfer, data networking, optical technologies, voice, Internet, service provider, semiconductors and other highly sought-after patents.

The sale of the patents is a coup for the six-company consortium over Google, which is known for having a weaker patent portfolio than many of its competitors that has left its mobile operating system Android, the world's most popular smartphone operating system, vulnerable to lawsuits. And the lawsuits have come for Google, some still ongoing such as Oracle seeking billions of dollars in a dispute over Android.

Google made a $900-million bid for the patents that was a starting point in the multi-day auction, which began on Monday. Information on how many other bids were made, and by whom, was not released.

"Following a very robust auction, we are pleased at the outcome of the auction of this extensive patent portfolio", said George Riedel, Nortel's chief strategy officer and president of business units, in a statement. "The size and dollar value for this transaction is unprecedented, as was the significant interest in the portfolio among major companies around the world."

The sale is a big one for Nortel, a company dealing with a bankruptcy. The deal is still subject to approval from Canadian and U.S. courts. A decision is set to take place in a joint hearing expected to be held on July 11, the Toronto-based communications company said.

"Nortel will work diligently with the consortium to close the sale in the third quarter of 2011," the statement said.

Florian Mueller, an intellectual property analyst writing for the blog Foss Patents, said he believes Google could have afforded to spend more than $4.5 billion for the Nortel patents, but it didn't, which might show it's not as committed to Android as many might have expected.

"No major industry player is as needy in terms of patents as Google," Mueller said in a statement. "There are already 45 patent infringement lawsuits surrounding Android and makers of Android-based devices have to pay royalties to dozens of rights holders. Just this week, Microsoft announced that three more Android device makers, in addition to HTC, are already paying royalties on Google's Android to Microsoft."

Buying Nortel's mobile patents wouldn't have solved all of Google's Android patent issues at once, but it could have helped tremendously, he said.

"There are many entities asserting rights against Android whose calculus wouldn't have changed if Google had bought those patents," Mueller said. "Oracle is a good example. Its lawsuit would have continued at any rate. But Google lost an unprecedented opportunity to acquire a major bargaining chip that would strengthen it at the mobile industry's intellectual property negotiating table.

"I'm afraid it won't get a similar opportunity in quantitative and qualitative terms anytime soon. It will have to continue to buy up smaller quantities of patents from failed start-ups and similar kinds of sellers."

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Apple CEO Steve Jobs gives a wave at the conclusion of the launch of the iPad 2 on stage during an Apple event in San Francisco on March 2. Credit: Beck Diefenbach / Reuters

Apple is promising updates to Final Cut Pro X, an attempt to blunt criticism from professional editors upset over features left out from the new app.

Final Cut Pro X -- the latest version of Apple’s popular video editing software -- “has impressed many pro editors, and it has also generated a lot of discussion in the pro video community,” the company wrote in a FAQ published online Wednesday.

Apple promises several updates that will bring back features found in older versions of Final Cut Pro, including the ability to edit video from multiple cameras at the same time.

“We will provide great multicam support in the next major release,” Apple said, but didn’t specify a time frame.

Final Cut Pro X, which was built from the ground up as a new application, has drawn criticism from professional video editors who say the new software is a toned-down version that doesn’t suit their needs. Professionals have compared the new app to iMovie, an editing software with fewer options that is used mainly by amateurs, even going so far as to call it iMovie Pro.

“This is no longer a professional application,” commenter Hectorsierra wrote in a review posted on Apple’s website. “This is a Final Cut Express meets iMovie!! I'm so disappointed that I want to cry!! :("

Apple released Final Cut Pro X last week on its Mac App Store, offering the software as a digital download for $299.99 -- for the first time, an on-disc hard copy of Final Cut is not available to purchase.

As the Technology blog reported last week, users who previously wanted Final Cut Pro had to shell out about $1,000 for the video editing application and a bundle of other programs called Final Cut Studio.

In its FAQ, Apple said users will also soon be able to export in XML, a key tool for professionals because the format allows the sharing of data between divergent applications.

Although Apple’s FAQ promises some updates, they don't include one highly sought-after feature: the ability to import complete project files from previous versions of Final Cut.

Because Final Cut Pro X contains “new and redesigned audio effects, video effects, and color grading tools,” users won’t be able to import projects from earlier versions “without changing or losing data.” However, Apple says, it is possible to import media files from previous versions into a new project file in Final Cut Pro X.

Apple did note that those who buy Final Cut Pro X will still have another option: using older versions of Final Cut.

“If you’re already working with Final Cut Pro 7, you can continue to do so after installing Final Cut Pro X, and Final Cut Pro 7 will work with Mac OS X Lion,” Apple said.

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-- Andrew Khouri

Photo: An Apple logo seen through raindrops on a window outside the flagship Apple Store in New York. Credit: Mike Segar / Reuters