[makthrow]

Very bad marketing here. Whoever chose the name "Google+" should be fired. First, the name confuses people with google's +1 button. Second, what does "+" have anything to do with a social network? It gives you no information at all about the service. They should have called it "google circles" and emphasized that Google Circles let you compartmentalize your social network, as opposed to facebook. Bam, instant differentiation. Instead we have a product that tries to do too much and needs a demo to make people understand.

[tmvphil]

I actually think not coming up with a clever or descriptive name is actually the right move here. Instead of setting it up as yet another new service from Google that you'll have to decide whether to invest time into or not, it advertises more as an enhancement of the features everyone uses already.

Its not like Google's gonna get people to divest themselves of Facebook (not in the near future anyway), so they've got to position themselves as an auxiliary rather than an alternative.

[chalst]

My guess is that this is deliberate: the g+ sparks feature is meant to complement the +1 buttons, and at some point they hope to talk about +1 as part of g+.

[commandar]

Can't seem to find it now, but I'm pretty sure I recall seeing +1 mentioned as a feature of Google+ in one of the about pages when I signed up for an invite.

[chalst]

Ah, good call.

It's mentioned in the Google+ help centre: http://www.google.com/support/+/