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+.
