Macworld — After Friendster, MySpace, Faceook, and Twitter, does the world really need another social network? If you're asking Google (GOOG), the answer would seem to be a resounding: Sure.

Google’s new social site is called Google+. It mixes Facebook’s posting/commenting/over-sharing paradigm with Twitter’s approach to one-way following relationships, sprinkles in some unique Google nuance, and sautées at 350 degrees for an hour. Of course, no social networking experience is complete without the requisite iPhone app; Google released its official Google+ app in July.

The main screen of the app offers five icons to navigate the Google+ experience: Stream, Huddle, Photos, Profile, and Circles. At the bottom of that screen sits a small Notifications status line; it updates (and turns red) when new alerts arrive. There’s also a gear icon at the top left that you might expect would let you configure Google+ settings, but that’s only because you haven’t yet read the next half of this sentence: The icon exposes a menu with links to in-app help, a privacy policy, the terms of service, but no options to tweak.

The Stream is where most of Google+’s core magic happens. It’s akin to your Facebook news feed, or your Twitter timeline, or your MySpace—well, I don't know, but since neither you nor I use MySpace, it doesn’t matter much. The Stream on the iPhone is easy to scroll through. Google wisely condenses lengthy posts and comment threads so that you can scroll from one post to the next more quickly; if you deem a given comment thread or lengthier post as worthy of further attention, you simply tap into it to read everything.

Photos in Google+ are cleverly organized. The app breaks them down into four sections: photos from your Circles, photos from your Picasa albums, photos from your iPhone, and photos (uploaded by anyone) in which you’ve been tagged. You can swipe through photos quickly, and tell at a glance which photos have been commented upon, read comments, and post your own. You can also, of course, quickly share photos from your iPhone.

All of your Google+ contacts are organized into Circles. You can create as many Circles as you’d like, and you can put the same person into more than one Circle. I might, for example, tuck certain Macworld colleagues in both my Coworkers and Friends circles, while certain in-laws may score a spot solely in the Family circle. Finding friends and dragging them into Circles is more eye-candy laden (and thus more fun) in the desktop Web app, but the iPhone app does offer complete access to all major aspects of friend and circle management: You can create new Circles, add and remove friends from them, and search for new people.

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