Google announced a new social networking layer that may compete with Facebook but, at the same time, is utterly different. The Google+ project will do some of the same general things as Facebook, such as sending messages to friends, sharing links, chatting, and sharing pictures, but the big difference is that with Google+, you can choose who you want to share these things with. Unlike with Facebook where posting a link will show up on your profile for all of your 500 friends to see, Google+ lets you do things a little differently. Heres how it works:

The concept of Circles is a major part of Google+. This is where you choose who you want in your contacts. You can have a family Circle, a BFF Circle, a co-workers Circle, and even an Epic bros Circle, as Google shows in the demo video below. One of the hardest things about Facebook becoming so popular is that everyone is on it and everyone is friends with you.

Most of us are friends with a lot of family members and colleagues on Facebook, and we enjoy seeing what theyre up to. However, we dont always want to share everything with them. Google allows you to choose which people you want in what Circle. You then use those Circles for all of your Google+ activity.

Sparks is a feature that lets you select certain areas, hobbies, or interests that you particularly like. Theyre the things you always ramble on and on about when someone brings it up at a party, like that new album by your favorite musician, or a new comic book. Google wants to keep people searching for content on its site, so Sparks helps by delivering a field of highly contagious content from across the Internet on any topic.

You can then share it with a particular group of friends who will appreciate the news of a new restaurant opening in your neighborhood, unlike the rest of your 495 friends who live in different neighborhoods and would otherwise be seeing it in your Facebook status.

Hangouts is one of the features Im not quite sure will catch on, but its a cool concept nonetheless. Hangouts aims to bring a group of friends together sporadically by combining casual meetups with live multi-person video. Im not sure how useful it will be when everyones just hanging out in different parts of the world, at different time, but the aim is to for people to just stop in when they have the time.

Maybe one of the best features of Google+ is Huddle, which lets you coordinate with friends and family in real-time. Its especially useful on your phone when youre trying to plan something out with a group of people. For example, when youre trying to pick a place to meet, you dont have to do the whole Ill call Jess and Jim and see if thats okay and call you back thing. You can just have a flowing conversation with the people you select in your Circle through text messages.