Many of us have been wondering what is going on with Google+. There have been very few updates to the service. Most of the movement has been to breaking services out (i.e. photos, hangouts) than improving what is there. This week we finally got an answer. They are evolving Google+ to focus on the strengths of the service.

Luke Wroblewski posted this on Google + about the service:

Today we’re taking a big step toward making Google+ an even better place for your interests. To do so, we’ve drastically simplified nearly every aspect of the product. You’ll see this clearly in our new navigation centered around Collections and Communities. Collections let you immerse yourself in content about topics like surfing (goo.gl/vvv5QD) or tiny tilt-shift photography scenes (goo.gl/nWyicL) . Communities enable groups of people with the same interests to join up and geek out on anything from Game of Thrones (goo.gl/aaqtgq) to Painting (goo.gl/kmlM7m). With Collections and Communities, discovering amazing things is simple: just follow or join whatever happens to pique your interests.

But we didn’t stop with Collections and Communities; the new Google+ also makes it easier to post, search, connect, and keep up with great content in a fully redesigned home stream. And we’ve worked hard to make our new web experience load fast and work beautifully on devices of all sizes.

I was going to report on this without having the new Goggle+, but when I just checked I got it! I really love the new layout designed. The old one to me was very disjointed and hard to follow. This is a bit cleaner and easer to follow. Gone are the endless trying to figure out which posts were first. In collections now you have a linear list and the name and cover photo are moved to the left.

Google is going to focus on content and communities. Will this pay off for them? It will remain to be seen if it works. I think the look of the service is greatly improved. I hated the jumbled news feed. Its going to make me actually use the service a bit more.

Are pages gone? I initially through this because there is no longer a navigation. You can go to the page under your icon in the top right corner. Just as you would do before. It gives you the ability to do creations and update status. To create a new page you must go under Google My Business and create it. So it’s a bit more involved for brands but it’s not impossible. It would seem they are focusing on people rather than brands.

Its an interesting change. I will dive a bit deeper into the service and report back next week. It’s definitely worth a look and interesting!