Everyone is saying that Google+ is a huge failure. That there's no reason for it to exist, that it will never compete with Facebook as a destination, etc. etc. They might be right. Why would I shift over to G+? None of my friends use it on a regular basis, meaning there's no interesting content (photos, conversations, shared articles), and the internet's primary utility is the conveyance of content.
So, it's really that question of "why" that looms largest. While G+ can't provide a reason, there are certainly other services besides Facebook and Instagram that can. Naturally, Twitter comes into this conversation. But those are all strict communication tools. Those have been positioned as the holy grail of information tools for advertisers because you can mine what people are saying and thinking. Granted, that's pretty incredible, and the work that companies like IBM are doing in big data and machine learning will definitely shine more insight than we have now.
However, I think that's a little short-sighted. What's most important to advertisers (a.k.a. people looking to get people to spend money on the products they rep) is people's relationship with money, and on what/with whom they're willing to spend. The less popularly considered but more interesting social networks from a business perspective are things like Airbnb, Etsy, and Uber. Airbnb and Etsy are examples of people building relationships with peers and the goods/services the value they can provide one another. Uber is powerful in that it has the capacity to tell you where people start, where they go, how long they spend there, with whom they go where (bill splitting tech introduced a few months ago), how wealthy they are (Uber black cars or UberX, how often do they take an Uber), and more.
Wanna know something crazy? Google just invested $258 million dollars in Uber's most recent financing, meaning they own part of it. Guess what's going to happen in a few years - Google's going to know all the stuff Uber knows. They're going to make it useful to you as a consumer through transportation services that will make the NY subway a relic of the past - a self-driven Prius will deliver you to "Jim's house." You'll pay a monthly subscription fee that might even be subsidized by the government in some kind of environmental/transportation program. Google will throw ads at you like the in-cab systems in NY, except those ads will be deals or sample coupons for local restaurants that are buying on AdWords. G+ will become a repository of all this information and more if/when the G+ Login spreads like I think it will.
GOOGLE PLUS LIVES!!!!!
