If you were lucky enough to have received in invite for Google+, you’re probably trying to figure out how to customize it. What if you made the new social network look like Facebook? Thanks to a browser add-on known as Stylish, that’s possible.
All you’ll need is to be using Firefox or Chrome and 5 minutes of your time. Soon, you’ll have Google+ look convincingly similar to Facebook. Sorry, Opera and Internet Explorer users, this won’t work on your browser yet. Here’s how you do it.
Step 1: Fire up your web browser of your choice and download the Stylish extension. You can use the Chrome version from Google’s Extension Marketplace and the Firefox version from Mozilla’s Add-On Site. Keep in mind that the Firefox version will require a restart.
Step 2: Browse to this page in order to get this theme. Click the "Install with Stylish" button in order to install it.
Step 3: Navigate over to Google.com/+ to see the changes. While Google+ preserves its identify, the dark theme was stripped out and replaced with Facebook’s smooth blue color scheme.
Of course, none of the site’s functionality is impacted by this tweak, and for most users, the default Google+ theme will likely look more appealing than any custom Facebook skin around. More importantly, it’s now clear that Google+’s look will make its way into into several of Google’s properties, beginning with Gmail.
Google+ is Google’s new social endeavor, after the failure of Ping and Google Wave before it. The new service is marketed as a friendly social network built around natural human interactions, by attempting to greatly simplify social networking tools. +Circles, for example, makes the management of friends easy, by allowing users to define which friends will have access to what content, such as status updates, pictures or videos. Google+ will also have a great mobile presence, with an Android App available since day one, and an iOS coming out "very soon".
The service has been able to make it to the headlines and keep interest pretty consistent over the last few days. Yesterday, there was such a high demand for the service that Google had to temporarily disable new invites. Hopefully Google will be able to turn this initial interest into market share over the next few months, and when the service becomes public.
Meanwhile, how do you like having it look like Facebook?
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