"Simply put, we're hoping to make sharing more awesome by making it more evocative," wrote Google senior vice president Vic Gundrota.
The new layout focuses heavily on visuals and also lets users customize their own corner of the network with a little more flair. A photo very similar to the "cover photo" on Facebook's new Timeline layout graces the top of users' new profile pages. Photos in the news feed show up more prominently, as do videos.
It's also easier to use Hangouts, which is one of the distinguishing features of the social network. The video chat feature allows users to chat with up to nine people at the same time. Hangouts had been on the front page of Google+ before, but had not been featured as prominently as they are on the new layout.
Since the network's launch, critics have said that Google's network wasn't user-friendly or particularly nice to look at, and had been criticized for poor presentation.
The redesign should address some of those issues — overall, it's a cleaner, clearer network — though the new look isn't transferring to the network's mobile app.
According to a report from The New York Times, Google is looking at ways to "integrate these changes into mobile devices," but haven't made the switch quite yet.
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