Seems like it's still drastically missing the mark on having a reason for being. Why would I use this? What would I put on there? Why there and not elsewhere?
Exactly. To most users, "we aren't facebook" is not an effective sales pitch.
As far as a comparison goes: both UI's leave me disappointed, but everyone i know is on facebook. I can think of 1 person who uses G+ with any regularity. By that measure, G+ loses every time.
A "don't be evil kind of Facebook" could've been appealing. Unfortunately they're decidedly not that, with their real name policy, forced integration with other services, public profiles, etc.
Clearly. I never understood how anyone could take the "don't be evil" slogan seriously, actually. It's comic book level of ethics. We can disagree over whether they are actually being evil though, but what is clear to me is that there is a seriously worrying potential for evil with the amount of information they control through being de-facto monopolies.
