...and after reading several articles and exploring a little myself, I have some initial thoughts. Most have to deal with the question I'm seeing all over the internet - Can Google+ Beat Facebook?
If that's even the right question, I think it's too soon to tell.
I don't remember where I read it, but one blogger suggested that while Google is obviously a web giant that employs extremely talented programmers with fantastic ideas - they aren't really a social network company, are they? I mean, look at Orkut.
Now don't get me wrong - Google+ has a plethora of pretty awesome features, including Circles, which will allow users to share with certain social circles instead of with everyone they know, and Huddle, instant group messaging that sounds super awesome but somehow not all that different from services like GroupMe (correct me if I'm wrong). The two that stand out to me the most are Hangout - a video chatroom of sorts that appears to be a lot more user friendly than, say, Skype, and doesn't involve downloading a program onto your hard drive - and Instant Upload for photos (and I assume videos), which as a photography enthusiast, is quite a draw.
Possibly even more exciting is easy integration on the web browsers and Google services I already use, especially for sharing (+1 is kind of like Digg and StumbleUpon), privacy defaults that aren't as obtrusive as Facebook's, and the ability to download everything you've ever shared on + in one neat little zip folder if you choose to do so. Also kind of nice - thanks to my Google profile, my + profile setup was already 75% complete when I signed up. All these things put Google in a nice position, even if Facebook has a head start.
Still - even considering the masses of people who migrated from the (formerly) immensely popular MySpace to Facebook, I think most are naturally resistant to change without a damn good reason. In the case of MySpace, at least for me, there were so many reasons it seemed like a no-brainer - Facebook was cleaner, people used their real names, and it was somewhat exclusive at the time (i.e. I didn't get spammed all the time) to name a few. It's going to be a question of whether these Google+ features outweigh Facebook's, and whether they actually make that big of a difference for the majority of people.
While sharing with specific circles sounds enticing, I think that despite the moaning and groaning, most people LIKE broadcasting their every move to everyone they know. They like growing their social networks as big as they can go. I can see people creating circles and still sharing the same stuff with all of them.
Two more things to consider - 1. Facebook Connect. While Google certainly would have the ability to do something similar with + in the future, there's not a similar service built into the current version. Even when people aren't on Facebook, they're using Facebook these days. 2. Facebook has been around something like 6 years and we've seen almost as many versions already. Even if Google+'s features outweigh Facebook's now, that's not to say Facebook won't come out with something just as useful in future versions. As much as I love Google products, the people at Facebook know what they're doing. As long as Mark Zuckerberg is around, I don't see Facebook going down anytime soon. Even if the "cool" factor shifts to Google+ (which is probably inevitable, at least in the beginning), Facebook won't be any less useful - and it's because it's useful, not cool, that it does so well.
My friends, and coworkers especially, know me as the girl who pushes Google services at every turn (i.e. as a web editor, every time someone has a problem viewing something online I always push them to switch to Chrome, anytime anyone moans about slow e-mail and full inboxes I push them toward Gmail, and I've even converted a few iPhone devotees to Android lovers). I would suggest everyone check it out, and I'll certainly be on it - but I don't think it's going to "beat" Facebook per se.
