Google+ has ramped up its challenge to Facebook with the addition of "auto-amazing" photo and video tools for telling artful life stories.
"Google aims to revolutionise photography," Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra said while introducing a host of new social networking features at an art gallery in San Francisco.
Photo and video sharing are among prime uses of online social networks, and Gundotra said Google+ users upload about 1.5 billion images weekly.
He also announced the that number of people who use Google's two-year-old social network at least once a month has climbed to 540 million from about 300 million early this year.
Facebook still dominates the world of online social networking, boasting more than a billion users.
News that makes sense
Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox.
Google hoped to bolster the popularity of its social network with new photo and video editing tools that automatically provide users with professional quality images and custom-made movies.
An "auto-awesome eraser" feature allow Google+ users to make unwanted people or objects in images disappear.
Google also beefed up search image search capabilities, increasing the number of terms that can be used to find specific pictures.
Video tools offered to automatically analyse video clips and images, and then weave them into movies complete with synched music sound tracks.
"This is not some little client editing system; this is the power of Google machine learning applied to photos and videos," Gundotra said
Google+ also unveiled improvements to its "hangouts" features that let people video conference free at the social network.
