The first of Google's big social announcements today is a new addition to Google + communities. Communities are groups of people arranged around a Google+ hub page dedicated to a specific topic. Community membership can be public or private, Google says, and support anything from local neighborhoods to groups arranged around a common interest or activity.
The Communities feature includes everything you would expect from a separate group: you can submit public posts that everyone can see, or just private posts that only members can access. You can initiate Hangouts just for your group and schedule Events that only they can access.
Most importantly of all, though, it creates a permanent home for the whole group. Pages just haven't quite been able to cut it in the past. This is a wonderful, welcome addition.
We're not seeing Google+ Communities on our accounts just yet, but we'd expect to see them appearing for most people later today -- check the sidebar menu on the right.
Alongside today's announcement, Google also dropped in a couple of stats detailing the progress of its 18-month-old social network. Some 500 members have "upgraded" their Google accounts to Google+, while 235 million are "active" on the service. Google includes users taking part in hangouts and +1ing items on the web and Google Play in this number; the number active "on stream" is apparently 135 million.