Here you can view your Stream- where the people you follow share their blurbs, articles, photos, etc. (like Facebook's Recent Posts); Photos- where you can view photos from your circles, photos you have already shared and even share photos from your iPhone's Photo Library; Circles- (like your Friends List in Facebook) where you can find someone you are following, go to their page, or search for other Google+ users; Huddle- like Hangouts minus the webcam, where you can search for one user on Google+ or multiple users and invite them to a chat (think AOL Chatrooms); and your Profile- which allows you to edit your information and see your posts, photos and personal information. Finally, at the bottom of this home screen of Google+ is a notifications bar that glows red when someone comments or adds you to their circles.
The place where you'll most likely spend an abundance of time is the Stream. In this section there are three pages- Incoming, Circles, and Nearby. Incoming deals with posts from people who have you in their circles and are sharing publicly with you. Circles covers the people that you are following and acts as a feed for the latest information and news from them. Nearby uses your location services to find people around you who are sharing their experiences. And its in this use that I find Google+ to be most innovative. There are a lot of different social apps out there that share what people are doing- sometimes ad nauseum (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) but Google+ takes it a step further by attempting to create communities around you in 3D, by inviting you to read up on what's happening right around you, in the real world, and go participate in it- thus expanding your circles into real-life.
There are some issues with the app that are frustrating- the +1 feature, so prevalant on the web, (think "likes" in Facebook) is relatively non-existent on the app- you may "+1" an article or post, but there is no place for reading what you have "+1"ed- like there is on the web. This is a major portion of the Google+ allure and I believe that it's omission is something that will be addressed in future releases or updates. Additionally, the app freezes often. In the month that I have been using it, it has frozen or crashed at least 6 times- often when swiping down to update. These freezes are often cleared up by clicking the "Home" button and relaunching the app. While they are inconvenient, they don't happen enough to make using the app an unpleasureable experience.
