[LordDragonfang]

Since there are probably people on this forum that are young enough to not actually remember Google+'s launch (or just not be paying attention), this was one of its headlining features (limiting post visibility to specific "circles" you chose). It was a great idea, and would have been super useful if it was ever used by anyone but Google fanboys.

[samatman]

Google decided that the way to launch a new social network was to piss off the nucleus of it, namely, the users of its existing social apps. By canceling Reader, and going on a long, obnoxious push to unify gmail and YouTube accounts, two things literally no one wanted.

If they'd been clever enough to make Google+ an extension of those things, it might have gone somewhere.

[marssaxman]

They additionally alienated many potential early adopters with the "real names" policy...

[cesarb]

That "real names" policy is the reason I have always been careful to never open YouTube while logged into any Google account: the understanding I gathered from the noise back then was that, if you ever logged into YouTube or Google+, and then Google for some reason decided that your name was not your real name, you could permanently lose access to more important things like Google Talk or Gmail.

[samatman]

Ah that fiasco! I'd memory-holed it. That was the final mistake, killing Reader was the first. I haven't forgiven them for it and I never will.

[BlueTemplar]

The sad thing is that Reader was already a successful social network on top of a RSS reader. But not successful enough for Google I guess...

[reaperman]

I'll never forgive Google for killing Reader. I truly believe the internet would be very different today if Reader had stuck around.

[kalleboo]

The sad thing is that Facebook had the exact same functionality with lists. You could scope posts and everything. Someone made a clone of the Google+ Circles UI using the Facebook SDK to sort your friends into lists that I used and I still use those lists to scope posts to family only etc.

[NoPicklez]

I joined Google+ when it first came out and the idea of circles was good.

The problem is Google+ is that it was trying to be a new Facebook without anybody on it.

Those types of social media sites are only as good as the number of your friends, peers, family that are using them