Google plus failed. But a few of us loved it, because of its interface and ease of managing for the large part, but also because we interacted differently with and with different people than on Facebook instagram etc.
Whereas Facebook to your point is dominated by my friends and family (but less and less their original content and more and more with copied "memes), Google plus rapidly developed shared circles of interesting people with interesting things to say. Thay we could flow. Pretty quickly my google plus was a rich mine of unbelievably high quality content from fabulous people. Not even HN has quite reached thay zenith for me.
(Twitter by all accounts does that for some. I have not been able to get over / subjugate it's insane formatting and threading limitations and sorting and algorithms and submit them to my will).