Problem seemed to stem from many joiners trying to treat it like Facebook, and Google's welcome pretty much suggesting the same, rather than as an interest sear

Problem seemed to stem from many joiners trying to treat it like Facebook, and Google's welcome pretty much suggesting the same, rather than as an interest search engine. Further, their assorted design and feature updates have slowly made it messier. The ludicrous realname policy killed off some interest too. Top that with forcing Play store and YT comments to be G+ accounts and you have a recipe for annoyance and chaos. For a very brief time G+ seemed to have a lot of potential as it looked like it could become a worthy successor to Livejournal and forums for niche interest discussion, but with a social focus. It worked rather well for photographers too. Those weren't the directions they emphasised with their many update experiments. They give communities, but take by a design update that showed a few lines only of a long comment unless you clicked on it. Discussions became rarer and that opportunity was lost. Most of the communicators drifted off to FB and other platforms and what seemed to remain was mainly Google fans and meme sharers. I know some persevere, but no one I actually know still uses it. Missed opportunity sums it up rather well.