The Google+ stream is basically more of a (much, much) better Twitter than a Facebook clone. I use it for public work related communication and specific topics via communities and hashtags.
Disclaimer: I'm a Googler
Google+ should have been a seamless (and transparent!) way of sharing content from all Google services.
Instead it is a weird social network, seated between the seats of a twitter and a facebook clone. It's probably great for twitter style yelling in the wind, but it really looks like its a facebook style only-shared-with-mutual-friends kind of network.
And Google services are awkwardly connected through G+. Are my pictures on Picasa or G+? And when they are on G+ are they shared with people I've added to my circles or with people following me? Or are they backed up until I decide to share them? This can all be controlled for sure, but it is completely non-obvious.
It is the same with hangouts. If you go to google.com/hangouts (a google search for hangouts will take you there as well!) you get an ad for the hangout app for mobile devices. But if you want to access hangouts online you have to go to G+. And from G+ you can log out of hangouts (what?) so what is hangouts? Is it a seperate service or is it g+ chat? If it is G+ chat, then why do I get an email instead of a G+ notification when people write me on hangouts?
Would go a long way to make G+ compelling. There's still not a good tool for sharing pictures/video on mobile. MMS/SMS is too clunky when I want to share something with 2 or more nearby friends.
I wish I could take a picture, swipe up and to the left from the picture to initiate sharing, and click on the "nearby" or "frequent" chat-heads that I want to share the picture with.