Google+ Rolls Out New Photo Editing and Hangout Features and Boasts 300 Million Active Users

Google recently rolled out a slew of new features aimed to take the work out of messaging, video calling and photo editing. The new features include location sharing, SMS for Hangouts and scheduling capabilities for Hangouts on Air. Photographers can now also create full-size backups of their images and access two new photo filters: HDR Scape and Analog Efex Pro.

During this announcement Google also released the latest usage data for Google+ with 540 million people using the network through Google properties each month, 300 million active on the Google+ stream and 1.5 billion photos uploaded each week. “The Google+ community is growing faster than we ever could have imagined,” the company wrote.

This is a pretty impressive growth rate representing a significant 21% increase from the data Google made available last December when it claimed that “235 million are active across Google (+1’ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search…), and 135 million are active in just the stream.”

Are you using Google+ yet?