A primer on Google+ and some highlights on what might work well for higher education admissions.

1. What Is Google+? Does It Matter for Higher Ed?

2. What is Google +? Google Plus is Google's answer to Facebook.

3. The Google+ Bar The Google+ Bar connects you with all of your Google products and let’s you to share what's on your mind. It also allows you to switch accounts.

4. Circles Circles allows you to easily manage your personal and professional connections – from people you truly know to people you'd only like to follow.

5. Stream The stream is where you have conversations with the people that are important to you.

6. Photos Photos allows you to upload and share unlimited photos and videos. All of your photos will be available in Picasa Web Albums.

7. Hangouts Hangouts is a live group video chatroom.

8. Chat Chat is automatically populated with people you’ve chosen to chat with via Gmail, iGoogle, Google Talk or Orkut.

9. Sparks Sparks serves up topics that you are interested in. It makes it easy to share the content you find with your Circles.

10. Profiles Your profile is the way you represent yourself on Google products and across the web. With your profile, you can manage the information that people see -- such as your bio and contact details.

11. +1’s Use +1 to recommend things to other people around the web.

12. Google+ Mobile: Huddle Use Huddle to send and receive group text messages.