The great thing about Google+ is that you don't need your friends to move there to derive value from it. Rather, it seems to be designed to follow a three-phase growth process, first supplanting Twitter, and then Facebook and Foursquare.
The asymmetric connection model makes it easy to fill your stream with enough signal to be useful, much like Twitter. This allows individuals to discover and begin using the service independent of their broader social network.
Which is where circles and check-ins come in: If you and enough your friends are already visiting Google+ of your own volition, why go elsewhere to share something with them? If enough folks in the area are already paying attention to Google+, why not check in there instead of on Foursquare?
It strikes me as less of a Facebook killer than Buzz 2.0, but with vastly broader institutional support and the tools to scale from that into a Facebook replacement, once your own social graph is sufficiently on board. All it takes is time.
Edit: Oh, and sparks! Sparks are great if you want to use Google+ but can't find enough users to fill your stream, yet. It's like googlebot-curated RSS. Again, it gives users a reason to come to Google+, even if their friends haven't.
My main feature request is the ability to select which circles are included in my main stream, or alternatively being able to create multi-circle streams. My problem is that the high output public twitter-type stream overwhelms my friends and family, so I'd like to exclude the Scobble-types unless I want to specifically look at their feeds.
The circles concept is really setup for set arithmetic, I guess they're trying to figure out a good UI for it.
I believe that is slated for he update that is due this week. It is one of my "wants" too.
Also, apparently better text chat support is turning up soon which is another of my key wants.
As "version 1"s go, the current Google+ is decent, a few features and tweaks and it'll be great (though not too many tweak please Google, particularly please let keep Facebook keep the 3rd party apps and all the associated scum).
Now if only more of my contacts cared to give it a try...
When it was open, I tried it out and let it process my friends list, but then instead of clicking the final invite button, I opened a javascript console, and found in the log an array of all my friends' facebook email addresses, so now I can invite them manually.
I don't know why I'm posting this though, since the site is closed. :/
Even in a "Waste of Space" circle, they will be able to pollute your stream.
I sincerely hope we can prevent some circles from appearing in the stream. This missing feature is the main reason why I still use Twitter. On Twitter I have the people I follow so I can get information, while I use google+ to see what my real friends want to share with me. Therefore, If I could hide the "Following" circle from my stream, I would spend less time on Twitter.
The trick is to create a circle of people you want to follow, and then click that circle on the left side of the stream page to see only what they think. I submitted a request for a main stream editor but I doubt they'll implement it.
Apparently you will seen be able to mark circles as not appearing in your default stream display. It might not be flexible enough to do what everyone wants by way of controlling the streams but we'll see when it arrives.
I just executed an "Exodus" request from this service, and it is still up and running and working as of 4:41 PST.
Since Facebook hasn't blocked this application as of yet, I wonder if Facebook is taking the stance that the more people that see Google+ now, the more people might see that Google+ isn't as useful and polished as Facebook.
I love Google+ and am an active user, but they still need quite a few more features (checkins, business pages, iOS integration etc) before they'll be hitting their stride for the masses.
Google+ actually has check-ins, both through the native Android app, and through the mobile web app. What's more, the current version of Google Maps on Android also has hooks to allow you to check in on Google+ without leaving the Maps app. You can even set Maps up to automatically check in, or remind you to check in, the next time you're near that location.
Now why anyone would want this is still beyond me. I've never been one to actually use Foursquare or Gowalla...
I'm not seeing the Google Maps integration yet on my Android device (Droid X), however I do see the check-in capabilities now on the Google+ Android App. Some locations show up but other's don't.
I'm seeing it on Google Maps 5.7.0, though it only seems to actually work reliably if you're also signed into Google Latitude. For what it's worth, I see a "Check In" option right next to "Rate and Review" when I go to My Location -> What's Nearby -> [Place].
The asymmetric connection model makes it easy to fill your stream with enough signal to be useful, much like Twitter. This allows individuals to discover and begin using the service independent of their broader social network.
Which is where circles and check-ins come in: If you and enough your friends are already visiting Google+ of your own volition, why go elsewhere to share something with them? If enough folks in the area are already paying attention to Google+, why not check in there instead of on Foursquare?
It strikes me as less of a Facebook killer than Buzz 2.0, but with vastly broader institutional support and the tools to scale from that into a Facebook replacement, once your own social graph is sufficiently on board. All it takes is time.
Edit: Oh, and sparks! Sparks are great if you want to use Google+ but can't find enough users to fill your stream, yet. It's like googlebot-curated RSS. Again, it gives users a reason to come to Google+, even if their friends haven't.