Google+ Developers Page is launched

There's no abuse, the "+" is only a reserved character in the query component of the URI. In the path component, it's a normal character like any other.

Ya know, call me crazy, but I still think Buzz had a lot of potential and that Google really just screwed the pooch in terms of execution with it. For one thing, I still think it was a huge mistake to tie Buzz exclusively into GMail. It never felt right to me to need to go into GMail first, to get to my Buzz feed. Maybe I was the only person in the world who felt that way, but I can't shake this sneaking suspicion that a standalone Buzz interface (something closer to Twitter's interface) would have helped.

Buzz also never seemed to have discovery tools that were as effective as Twitters in terms of helping find interesting people to follow.

But they were onto something with the richer messaging format and some of the other features. Thankfully it looks like most of the best parts of Buzz got rolled into G+ (conceptually if not literally at a code level).

All of that said, I still think G+ feels a bit "heavy" and that something like Buzz (in standalone mode) that fits between Twitter and G+ / Facebook could garner some meaningful traffic. Or maybe not, whatever. <shrug />