Google+ Gains Auto Awesome Movie Maker; Hangouts Get SMS Support & More

Google has announced three new Google+ “Auto Awesome” photo features: Action, Eraser and an iMovie Trailers-like Auto-Awesome Movie tool. The Google+ Hangouts app for Android also gains location sharing, animated GIF support and SMS integration. Google+ Hangouts On Air gain landing pages and a new “Control Room” menu.

Summary slide from the close of today’s Google+ event

These, as well as new Google+ user figures and other changes, were announced during an event the company held with local tech press, as well as selected photographers and Google+ users. The event was also livestreamed for anyone to view.

Google+ Users

Google+ Hits 300 Million Active Monthly “In-Stream” Users, 540 Million Across Google is our separate article that covers the new Google+ users figures that were announced.

Google+ Hangouts

Google has added these new features to the Google+ Hangout app for Android:

• Location sharing
• Animated GIF viewing
• SMS support

Google shares a few more details and screenshots about this in this blog post.

Google+ Hangouts On Air

Google has added these features to Google+ Hangouts On Air:

• Dedicated landing pages for events
• Hangouts managed via a “Control Room” panel

Again, Google has a few more details and screenshots in this blog post.

Google+ Photos

• Auto-enhance gains a “low” and “high” setting that can be applied to photos or entire albums selectively
• Action is a new auto-awesome feature that blends several pictures into one, to capture motion in a single frame
• Erasure is a new auto-awseome feature that removes moving objects that may have crossed into a photo
• Movie is a new auto-awesome feature that automatically combines pictures, videos and music to make a movie. The final product can be edited, and there’s also a full manual mode.

Google shared a video with more about these feature:

[youtube width=”600″ height=”450″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv1tZm1sHQI[/youtube]

It also explains more about some of the features, as well as other photo features, in this post.

Below, our live blog of the event:

The video might also be available below, post-event. For now, it is. Fast-forward to 49 minutes in, to get past all the dead air:

[youtube width=”601″ height=”338″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al0k1Dia6E0[/youtube]