Week in Review - June 4, 2016: Google+, Hangouts, Accounts and more

As we roll into summer, there were a few updates this week: updates to the Android Google+ and Hangouts apps, improvements to your Google Account Settings, Google Now on Tap, and Google Keep.

The image is a detail from A Love Story by E. Phillips Fox (1903). The perfect summer day.

YouTube and Video Creation

• Update The YouTube Trends Map and Dashboard are being retired
• Update 360-degree video comes to Twitter (The Verge)
• Tip How to Make an Interactive Video Work for You (VideoInk)
• Tip Make an edible Google Cardboard viewer for delicious watching (Make:)

Live Broadcasting

• Update Periscope introduces crowd-sourced comment moderation (Periscope Blog)
• Facebook to conduct its first livestream broadcast from space (The Next Web)
• Update Facebook starts rolling out Live Video map on desktop (Mashable)
• Live Stream News week commencing 22 May 2016 (Krishna De on YouTube)

Google+

• Update Have a Google+ Collection full of flowers? Submit to #FeatureFriday by June 8 (Sophie Bonnet)
• Update Google+ Android 8.0.0 update: new flagging options and more (Luke Wroblewski)
• Tip G+ Tip: Change the image when you share a link (Sooraj Wadhwa)
• Is Google doing away with Google+ business Pages? (Robert Wallis)
• Carthago delenda est! Mark Zuckerberg and the war to crush Google+ (Vanity Fair)
• Tip How do I use Google Spaces? (Martin Brossman on YouTube)

Google Photos and Mobile Photography

• Update VSCO's new app features a fresh look and lots of gesture control (The Verge)
• Update Instagram's non-chronological feeds are rolling out now, so just suck it up (The Next Web)
• Update Coming Soon: New Instagram Business Tools: Business Profiles, Insights, Promote posts as ads (Instagram for Business blog)

Google for Small Businesses

• Update Google My Business is on Facebook and Twitter
• Tip Is your business website mobile friendly? Try the new Google Mobile Friendly Website Test
• Update Google My Business updates for May 2016 (GMB Help Center)
• Tip Best Practices for Practitioner Listings on Google My Business (GMB) (Joy Hawkins at Whitespark)
• Tip Got spam? Google My Business doesn’t care. (Joy Hawkins @ Search Engine Land)
• Update Introducing New and Notable apps in the Google Apps Marketplace (Google Apps Updates blog)

Bloggers and Webmasters

• Update Webmasters: did you miss any of these Google I/O updates? (Google Webmasters blog)
• Tip Is your website mobile friendly? Try the new Google Mobile Friendly Website Test
• Tip The Google News Publisher Playbook (Paolo Amoroso)
• Tip Google: We Don't Care About Underscores Vs. Dashes In URLs (SEO Roundtable)
• Tip 7 essential Google Analytics reports every marketer must know (Search Engine Land)

Hangouts and Mobile Messaging

• Update Android Hangouts 10.0: now with direct share support (Android Police)
• Update The Hangouts video call overlay issue should be fixed (Hangout Toolbox)
• Update Introducing Power Women Mojis and Emoticons (Skype Updates Blog)
• Update Facebook is shutting down its Notify app, moving features to Messenger (The Verge)
• Update Facebook brings new, diverse emoji to Messenger (Daily Dot)

Nexus and Android

• News Sundar Pichai: Google will be "more opinionated" about Nexus design (The Verge)
• Tip Project Tango: Making Any Space a Play Space (Google Developers on YouTube)
• News And the winners of the Google Play Awards are… (Android Developers blog)

Privacy and Security

• Update Google "My Account" improvements and new controls (Official Google Blog)
• Update Removing account owner name from the Google bar (Google Apps Updates blog)
• Tip Google Has Been Recording Your Voice (Unbox Therapy on YouTube)

Productivity

• Update Chrome is removing the "backspace" key as a shortcut to go back a page (Business Insider)
• Update Now on Tap update: Text Select and Image Search (Google Search blog)
• Update Google Keep gets smarter: link preview, duplicate detection & autocomplete (Google Docs)
• Update Document outline now available in the Google Docs app on your iOS devices (Google Apps Updates blog)
• Update Android users can now easily test beta versions of Google Maps (The Verge)

Elsewhere on the web

• Working for an adware startup: "Just don't ask us what we do" (Backchannel on Medium)
• This Is The Face Of The Internet's Best Hoax Slayer (Daily Dot)
• The real reason America controls its nukes with ancient floppy disks (Washington Post)
• Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Microsoft Join European Union’s Fight Against Hate Speech (TubeFilter)
• Introducing DeepText: Facebook's text understanding engine (Facebook Code blog)

Updated March 2019 to remove Google+ links