Fridge, a social networking startup, has been acquired by Google to improve the capabilities of Google+ in group sharing. Fridge started with a vision to make the process of creating ad-hoc online social groups simpler for the users, so they could share posts, photos, videos, text messages and discussions through desktop computers and mobile devices.
“We strongly believe in the group social experience and couldn’t think of a better place to realise our vision of bringing the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web as part of the Google+ Project,” says a blog post from Fridge.
The circles feature of Google+ is unique to it, which allows users to create different groups — such as friends, family, work, college buddies or game buddies. This way, the users are able to share different contents with different groups, unlike other networks where whatever they post go to all the members of the group.
The current Fridge users have been asked to download their personal data by August 20 after which all their data will be deleted by Fridge as per their privacy policy.
Google+ is currently in beta and is available only to users through invites, though the ease with which users can get invites varies depending on time. It is estimated that Google+ has close to 20 million registered users. Facebook, on the other hand, has about 750 million members, a huge lead over Google+. The shared circles concept as well as event planning from Fridge could make its way to Google+.