[bdhe]

I'll take a shot at this: I think G+ is possibly the most comprehensive (in terms of design and functionality) new product in the social space right now. Since it comes from Google, who have the history of "revolutionizing" various aspects of the web, hackers want to learn more and put G+ in perspective of existing (competing?) products. This makes it very interesting not only to read about how to fit G+ into the current framework (Twitter-but-longer? LinkedIn-killer? Facebook-killer?) but also follow the minutiae of the growth, adoption, and evolution of G+ (much like they would have taken to GMail, if the timelines had overlapped, imo).