Here's what Google should have done instead of Google+. (As for the OP, Google+ is a ghost town. It doesn't matter much how often people pass through and see

Here's what Google should have done instead of Google+. (As for the OP, Google+ is a ghost town. It doesn't matter much how often people pass through and see the tumbleweed blowing around if they're not staying and contributing.) First, they should not make people register for Google+. They shouldn't even call it Google+. It should just be a feature added to gmail: pages. You create gmail pages and you manage access to gmail pages. Access is not granted to other "Google+" accounts (there's no such thing), but to any set of email contacts. Access may also be made public, in which case a gmail page acts as a lightweight blog post (though you might require login to comment). That's it. Rather than sending a friend an invitation to Google+, you'd send a link to an interesting gmail page. If it's access controlled (not public), then when they click to retrieve it, if they don't have the cookie yet, they'd need to check their email and click the Google just sent. In many respects, it should function just like Google+ does now. Pages would have posts, pictures, comments, live chats, hang-outs, games, whatever. And once you're on a gmail page, you could browse up to the author's profile page and see whatever other pages they'd made visible to you. The major difference is that you could send content to anyone without the stupid "are you on Google+?" conversation that has to happen first now and thus can build pages without worrying too much about whether the ghost town will become a popular tourist destination.