Or maybe they just aren't posting to you? A few months back I read the claim that there's twice as much private sharing as public.

I've heard this argument (mostly from Googlers) before. I don't buy it though, as I occasionally (rarely now) see friends post things and get zero comments. The same comments will get tons of comments on Facebook.

This thing has largely failed outside of tech circles and twitter style (celebrity) newsfeeds at the moment. Hopefully that will change, as I find it superior to Facebook in virtually every way.

I'm curious, what are all the ways in which you find it superior? I agree that circles are better than Facebook friend lists, but G+ seems to lack some features that others find essential on Facebook, like event creation. I've heard a lot of people say that's the biggest reason they have a Facebook account. Also, there's no direct messaging system, at least that I'm aware of. FB messaging has basically replaced email for a lot of people. I suppose I could put someone into their own circle, but that seems rather inelegant.

My biggest issue with it is the lag, which is ironic for a product by Google. Sometimes it takes 30+ seconds for images to load. This significantly affects the user experience, since I usually don't wait, I just move onto something else.

I've never used events or posting on other people's wall on Facebook. Those are Facebooks two remaining advantages, IMO.

I know a lot of people use Facebook for messaging, but I would honestly prefer that they just email. I don't really see the advantage of a non-email email over just using email. Google+ email and chat integration are just fine.

You don't have to manually put people into their own circles. If you share something, just start typing their name (instead of a circle name) and it will let you share with individuals instead of circles. It works the same way otherwise.

I find the slowness surprising, actually. Whenever I've used + it always seems either the same or faster than Facebook. Perhaps this has to do with specific network environments or something? I have noticed that it takes a while for updates to propagate (caching, I guess) across to other users. That part is a little annoying at times.

I'm on the G+ photos team. Do you have an example of a slow loading image? If you can send me a link I could take a look.

Latency is definitely something we care about.

Edit: Well wouldn't you know, this just happened:

http://i.imgur.com/ESojw.png

Typical of what I see. This is a fresh Firefox profile, no cache, no extensions. It's also not a network problem, since I don't see this on other sites, even other Google properties like search or Gmail. It's unique to G+

Thanks for the screenshot!

Two quick follow-up questions: On that screenshot, it looks like it's the main profile picture and the profile picture thumbnails for the circles that are slow to load (but the images from the stream are loaded). Is that typically what you see, or is that just what happened in this case?

Do have a sense for whether this happens more often when you're looking at profiles of people who are in a lot of circles (like Tim O'Reilly)?

Thanks for your help.

In hopes you'll still see this, is there some sort of obvious Google+/Google Calendar integration in the works? Or just somewhere an official roadmap available for the Google+ development?

Sorry - I can't comment about any upcoming features or plans.

Is there something specific you're looking for? I could pass it on to the product managers.

For direct messages, type the recipient's name instead of a circle.