It's a real shame, because I can definitely see a way for Google to do social networking in a way that would pull me away from Facebook. Basically I could conne

It's a real shame, because I can definitely see a way for Google to do social networking in a way that would pull me away from Facebook. Basically I could connect with people and put their feeds into channels sort of like Slack (one for family, one for work, one for recruiters so I could get rid of Linkedin). But I'd have control over each channel and (this is important) people could message me in a way that worked like Gmail, but I wouldn't have to fork over my Gmail address. For me that was the critical omission, the idea that we can be "friends" on Google+ but you have no way to message me. It never made any sense. And I'm not even that smart.