This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
I've been playing with Google+ the past couple weeks, and my conclusion is this: Yes. If photographers had to chose between sharing images on Google, Facebook, or Twitter, Google is the standout.
Two aspects of Google's new social media network improve on the earlier sites, at least from the perspective of image-sharing:
Most importantly, images look fantastic. The compression algorithms are kind, the pixel dimensions aren't automatically resized, the pages and galleries are elegant, and the upload interface is simple.
The hashtag feature, borrowed from Twitter, allows like-minded photographers to effortlessly find each other's work. I'm now following some great artists I don't think I'd have heard about otherwise.
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Of course, if Google+ keeps improving their photography interface, they may someday be nearly as useful as Flickr.