Fair point. I've noticed G+ doesn't work at all for live event updates, so expecting them to build a Facebook-like "heartbeat" thing on the side at some stage.

Fair point. I've noticed G+ doesn't work at all for live event updates, so expecting them to build a Facebook-like "heartbeat" thing on the side at some stage. At the same time, I can say I've moved a lot of link sharing to G+, so for that use case, it's a fairly direct substitute. The rich embedding is better and I can say what I want without having to cram it. It's like that Pascal quote about not having time to make it concise...G+ just lets you write a couple of sentences, or more on whim, without having to then manicure it into 140 characters.