This article was published on October 12, 2011

Group.as is a web directory for finding and being found on Google+


Group.as is a web directory for finding and being found on Google+

Are your Google+ circles a little bare? Perhaps you’re looking for new cool and interesting people to follow. Group.as has created a web directory focused on discovery of great people to follow on Google+.

Group.as has some basic group categories such as Blogger, Celebrity, and Photographers, but you can easily add your own. It’s a great way to be discovered and added to new circles if you’re looking for new followers on the service.

One of the downfalls of Google+ is its lack of discovery as far as people are concerned. Recently, the Google+ team announced “Shared Circles“, which has increased the ability to be found in circles created and shared by people all over the world. Group.as is beautifully designed and acts as a stand-alone service, so discovery is even easier than on Google+ itself.

Adding yourself to Group.as

Adding yourself is simple. All you have to do is paste your Google+ profile ID which looks something like: 104612091113514802664. Once you’ve added your profile ID, you can start choosing which groups you’d like to be included in. Group.as autocompletes as you type, which is a nice touch that keeps people from adding duplicate groups with misspellings. You can add yourself to as many groups as you like or create a new one, and then submit.

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The only problem here isn’t a Group.as problem, it’s a Google+ problem. The Google+ profile ID is a ridiculous way to share your profile with someone. Sure, it’s easy to copy and paste, but I believe that usernames are way easier to communicate. Hopefully the Google+ team knows this and pushes out some form of username soon. It should be easy to do since Google+ accounts are based on our Gmail accounts.

Discovering new people

Creating new circles based on people you find is easy as well. You can simply drill down into a group and you’re shown a users profile picture and how many circles they’re currently in. The users are ranked by how many circles they’re in, which makes it easy to know who might be more interesting to follow.

Once you’ve chosen the person you’re interested in, you’re one click away from their Google+ profile. Unfortunately, Group.as can’t automatically add people to circles, as this is a limitation of Google+’s read-only API. Hopefully this is something Google+ changes in the future as well.

Overall, if you’d like to see who’s who on Google+, Group.as is the best way to do it based on categories that we’ve seen. Add yourself and let us know in the comments if your follower count goes up on Google+ afterwards!

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