Majority of social networks out there have a messaging feature that allows to send private messages to another network user even without knowing their email address.

Google+ lacked once such feature, however there was other ways to achieve similar functionality by sharing a post as private message to a single google+ user.

That is not the case anymore as sending a private message has been added and available right now on any Google+ users profile.

To better protect privacy and spam, they’ve also added fine grained control of who should be allowed to send private messages or email’s through the profile.

Today if you go to your Google+ profile, you’ll find two buttons just below the profile picture as mentioned below

Send a message 

This option is similar to sharing post with a single user except it is packaged in a single button. When someone or you send a message using this option, you’ll find that message in the Incoming section of the Google+ stream. It’ll be a limited shared post with only visible to the sender and the receiver. The nice thing about this is, you can comment on the post and have a larger conversation on the topic (which through email takes several emails and the context get’s lost).

Send an email

This option will provide a dialog similar to email compose and you can type in a subject and a message. Once you hit send, a email is sent to that Google+ user’s registered email.

Google+ send email or private message options

Worried about spam or privacy? Don’t worry it is covered through the following settings

• Goto your Google+ profile by clicking on your first name link just next to your profile picture
• Click on Edit Profile button
• You’ll find a icon just next to the Send a message or Send an email button
• Click on the icon one at a time and configure to altogether turn off that particular feature OR configure who should be allowed to contact you
• Just uncheck the Allow option to completing turn off send message or email feature