Very cool-looking, especially the cover photo for events. Should companies/bands/artists and the like start taking G+ seriously, this will be a big selling point (they love little branding opportunities like that).<p>Calendar integration: Just makes sense. Not really a feature so much as an obvious subfeature.<p>"Party Mode" looks promising. I'd say the only thing I don't like about Facebook's events is the lack of a group photo album for events, so Google have done well in integrating this.<p>But, again, until the people I know are actually on Plus, G+ events are just going to be something else just for the geeks.
This is the first time I've looked at all of Google's social offerings and thought... wow this is a cohesive, thoughtful, and well-executed set of products. I do hope this reaches some sort of critical mass and takes off. Even if it doesn't its nice to see them really pushing the envelope and putting the fire under everyone else.
<i>Share instantly with Party Mode<p>Snap photos during the event and share them with everyone at the party in real time, right from your phone.</i><p>Thanks, but no, thanks. Life looks more and more like a Nathan Barley episode.
Pretty poor implementation. Random people are inviting me to events and I see no way to block that. Linus says his homescreen is filled with invites - <a href="https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/Lwz4yjasX6d" rel="nofollow">https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/Lwz4yjas...</a><p>Google, the default should be such that only people in your circles can invite you.
I just invited all of my family members who are attending our July 4th Beach Week, and so far it looks like an excellent way for us to plan the meals and share our pictures.
Regarding party mode, every photo that I take is not worth sharing. I'll often snap 2-3 trying to get one that looks halfway decent. I don't want to automatically share the poor quality ones along the way.
The event search is not very smart. I created an event in Brighton (UK).<p>Search for: "Events brighton" returns my event plus many other events in other Brightons around the world.<p>Search for: "Events brighton uk" only returns 1 event (not mine) as they explicitly mentioned 'uk' in the location name.<p>So the search doesn't really understand that my event is in the UK, it is just doing a string match - even though Google knows the exact longitude and latitude of the event.
There is an app for iOS (since a long time ago) that does exactly that: <a href="http://www.onthehive.com/getapp" rel="nofollow">http://www.onthehive.com/getapp</a>
I wonder how having photos showing up in real time, in "Party Mode", would effect the dynamics of events/parties (if it would in fact make a difference)?
The Youtube flash video player is displayed on top of the create event form. (On my MBP screen). Looks like they haven't tested it with smaller screens.
Events should have been there from the start. Events are the only reason many people use Facebook. I was inclined to try and get people to switch over to Google+ when it first launched, but the lack of Events was a turn off. I'm no longer inclined to use Google+ for anything.
This would be very useful, if I used Google+ and knew more than 5 people who did too. But sadly, I don't. So I guess I'll just have to use the nearly-identical feature on Facebook.