Google+ Adds New Funtion Called Events

Recently, sometime during the last two weeks, I noticed a new icon with the title "Events" and the red addition "NEW" in the left frame of the Google+ pages and wondered how this worked.

Two days ago, I got invited to such an event on Google+ and when I accepted it yesterday it got automatically added to my Google Calendar. Last night, during the event – which was a dinner – I and other participants logged into Google+ on our mobile devices, tapped on the the event post, tapped on Party Mode, whoever had not yet enabled instant photo upload got a pop-up with the option to do so, and from this moment forward every photo taken was added to the event, as long as the photographer was in Party Mode.

Back at the PC now, clicking on the event post I get a link to view the photos as a slide show, or I can choose to scroll down the page to view each one individually like that and write a comment on any photo if I feel like it and tag people. Commenting on photos was also possible on the mobile, already during the event and also now.

One snag was that the upload of some photos was delayed substantially, by over an hour. One of the two Googlers at the table explained that the team in charge of the Events project was working on fixing bugs as we were eating and he communicated this delay immediately to a member of that team.

If you get an opportunity to use Google+ Events I suggest that you try it out and post about your experience. Like many other Google functions, this one was added without any fanfare, for users to discover and use if they like it. I can imagine that – like some other functions – lack of frequent use could lead to the discontinuance of Google+ Events.

Disclaimer: I am not employed by Google, do not get paid by Google nor receive other benefits from them for mentioning Google in my posts, but own a few Google shares which I bought on the stock market at regular price.