Google announced the beta release of Currents last year, however, not many people know what it is as the company hasn’t exactly advertised it since, but it’s the enterprise replacement/successor for Google+, many of us don’t get to use it anyway.
Google has been working on the new business social network for a year now and says it is now stable enough to migrate G Suite Google+ users over starting July 6, 2020, as the company announced in an email to administrators.
While there are some visual changes, Currents is still Google+ at its core, leaving us wondering why Google even had to introduce a new product to replace its social network. Starting July 6, the Google+ app will be updated to Currents. All existing plus.google.com links will continue working, being redirected to currents.google.com. The same is true for content a company currently hosts on Google+ — everything will be transitioned over, including posts, comments, likes, and people you follow.
Other than the new white interface, Currents does offer a few new features, making the business focus more apparent. There are now streams, which are basically channels meant to organize topics. Google gives announcements, help desks, and fun-based things like pets and wellness as examples. There are also post analytics, which allows you to see a breakdown of views, comments, reshares, and likes on what you’ve posted. Google+ collections will be removed, and all posts within them will be grouped with a system-generated tag. Public communities that aren’t part of a domain will be deleted altogether.
Here’s a brief overview of what Google highlighted in its Google Currents release:
- Beginning July 6, 2020, users will be transitioned to Currents on all platforms. Currents provides users access to new features, including custom company streams, content discovery, and routing via tagging.
- Users of the iOS and Android Google+ mobile apps who have auto-update enabled will be automatically upgraded to the Currents mobile app, which replaces their existing Google+ mobile app. Other users will be prompted to upgrade to the new Currents mobile app (via redirection to the appropriate store) so they can continue using the service.
- All existing links to plus.google.com will continue to work, as users will be transparently redirected to currents.google.com.
- In the days prior to this switch, your users may see a banner in Google+ apprising them of these changes and linking them to relevant Help Center content.
