[moritonal]

Google+ by any other name and four years earlier would have been an incredible platform. Circles were so neat.

[FeloniousHam]

100%. I got pulled into Old School Revival TTRPGs there. It was smaller and quieter, and in the sections I read mostly free of politics and other noise. I miss the "anti-social network".

[fsckboy]

two years earlier it was Google Buzz. two years before that it was Google Wave.

[radlad]

I don't recall Buzz or Wave having the Circles feature that many (including myself) miss from Google+.

[starkparker]

The closest thing that I remember within a Google product was actually Google Reader's optional friend-of-a-friend visibility on shared items/comments. A lot of little circles-like communities that sprung up around individual people.