Google+ is the fastest social network to have reached several milestones including 10 million, 20 million and 40 million users. The social network is growing rapidly and more importantly the existing users spend a lot of time on Google Plus compared to other social networks. The browser which was the fastest to adapt to Google+ was the official Google browser “Google Chrome”. Chrome has got more extensions for Google+ compared to any other browser.
There are many awesome Chrome extensions for G+. Here are my pick for the top 3 chrome extensions for Google Plus:
1. Google Translate for Google+: If you are a long time Google+ user, then you would probably find people of different nationalities and speaking different languages in your circles. The G+ user community has been active as well as loyal since the start of the social network. Images, gifs, links etc. are often reshared upto thousands of times. On many occasions those shares might not be in your native language or even English which makes it difficult to comprehend. It holds true especially in case of posts including gifs and images where you also want to understand the text written by the original poster even if it is in a language you do know. The Google Translate for Google+ Extension for the Chrome browser is of extreme help in such scenarios. With the helps of the extension, you can translate the text inline in your Google+ stream without the need of using Google translate separately. This is an extremely handy extension if you use Google+ actively.
2. Google+ notifications: Google+ Notifications is a very useful extension for all Google+ users. Like is the case with most other social networks, people do not use Google+ all throughout the day. But you would probably like to check the latest notifications such as shares and comments on your posts, circle notifications etc. instantly. This extension helps in doing so. As long as you are logged inside your Google account, the extension will display the recent notifications in your browser itself. You can browse any other website or do your regular work and still receive the notifications. This extension adds a button similar to the one present inside your Google Plus account. Whenever you receive a new notification, the button will become red and show the number of new notifications. On clicking it, you will find the drop down with the details of the notifications. And you can act on them and reply, add to circles from inside the extension button itself. This is also an official extension from Google which means that you can be sure about the quality and long term support of this Google+ extension. There is another unofficial extension Surplus which adds functions such as Notification sounds and the ability to switch between Google accounts. However, there are mixed reviews of the Surplus extension and so, you can decide on which one works for you better.
3. SGPlus: This is a very useful extension if you use facebook, twitter and linkedin too and would like your posts to be cross posted to the three social networks. This adds a button to facebook, twitter and Linkedin inside your Google+ account for quick access. More importantly, whenever you share a post on Google+ it can be automatically cross posted to your Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin account. If you do not want them to be auto shared then you can also turn the feature off. The extension also adds a gmail notifier button in your browser so that you can be notified and can read the new emails without leaving Google+. There is another Google Chrome extension Extended Share for Google Plus which supports a lot more social networks and social bookmarking sites but it only adds a “Share on …” on the Google+ posts and does not do much else.
If you are a regular Google+ user and use Google Chrome, then the first two extensions are must installs. There are several other good Chrome extensions released for Google Plus and so, please make sure to visit the Chrome web store to check them out.
