I think the thing that might give this some oomph is Google's newly introduced black nav bar -- for those of you who haven't gotten Google+ access, there's an alert on the bar when there's new Google+ activity, which you see whenever you hit any Google page (search, maps, images, news, etc.) so long as you're logged in with your account. It's a pretty clever way to take advantage of the fact that most people hit multiple Google pages a day, if only briefly.