What is Sparks, really? Sparks is a way to track tags or keywords that interest you. You can create a "Spark" for pretty much anything you might normally search on Google, and when you click on the Spark for that interest it will display a feed of related links and stories. The integration with Google+ and with Circles makes it easy to share items of interest with friends and contacts.

Taking my grandfather out of the equations, I see Sparks more like incorporating the directly into the Google+ social network. I have a variety of Google Alerts set up to monitor the Web for me and send me daily digest of relevant information related to my Google Alerts search terms. Sparks does basically the same thing, but it does it as a link directly integrated into Google+ instead of an email sent out once a day.

Putting Sparks to Work

There are two ways to use Sparks. You can type keywords into the search field and use Sparks as a sort of Google search that is integrated from within Google+. Once you complete a search, you can also click the "Add interest" button to pin it as a link under Sparks in the left column for quick access.

I like Sparks, but not for how Google intended it. Carrying the Google Alerts analogy forward, it takes a special combination of skill, luck, art, and science to find the right set of keywords to target the information you really want. It is very easy to be too specific and miss relevant news, or too broad and end up with a feed filled with junk you don't really care about. The same is true of Sparks.