Google's burgeoning social network, Google+, leaves its limited, invite-only preview today and enters a public beta, meaning anyone can join, no invitation necessary. They also finally added search and made Hangouts even better!


How, you ask? In addition to opening up to the public at large, Google+ has added a lot of cool features to our favorite Google+ innovation, Hangouts, since they first launched. You can now participate in Hangouts from your phone, watch "Hangouts On Air", which allows you to broadcast your Hangout to the public, and even share your screen, a sketchpad, or a Google Doc from a Hangout. (The screen sharing could potentially come in really handy.)


You can also now search for both people and posts from the Google+ search box (or at least you will be able to once the rollout is complete). Google took some guff for the lack of search in Google+ (because, you know, they supposedly know something about search), so it's nice to see search make its way to G+.

I imagine most Lifehacker readers interested in trying out Google+ already found a way in, but if you haven't, now might be a good time to kick the tires. If you need a little help wrapping your head around it while you get started, check out our guide to using Google+. And if you're looking for people to add to your circles, you might be interested in adding the Lifehacker team.

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You can contact Adam Pash, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.