I just joined Google Plus. The main thing I have been getting my head around is how it works. Since I didn’t really use Google Wave or Buzz that much, I was intrigued to find out if lessons had been learned. It seems that they have and are taking the best bits from Facebook and Twitter. I found this article that includes the following paragraph that illustrates its purpose very well: 

That is the big difference between Google Plus and most other networks. Twitter is an all or nothing model. You can share with everyone or you can only share with all the people that follow you. But you can’t share with only a sub set of the people that follow you (such as a specific Twitter List.) Facebook is a little more flexible than that. But you must be friends with people or you must reduce your privacy. You can limit who sees individual things you share, but it is difficult to do and not intuitive to get set up.

It seems that Google learned something from its former employee Paul Adams. His presentation of the real life social network illustrates the problem of using facebook and shows how personal networks are more complicated than the facebook philosophy of everything about you should be public. Look at the whole presentation to see understand his point.