Every viral page I look at tends to follow the pattern here (top of page):
http://9gag.com/gag/3980419
FB: 16,000+ likes
FB: 11,000+ shares
Google +: 43
Even Pinterest makes it into the hundreds.
Yeah, I am seeing results this all the time. It must be embarrassing for G.
"+1" is well used slang too, it should be clickable but I guess who would want to 'share' when they don't know anyone on or don't use G+
From what I see, aside from Google employees and their close friends/family, it's mostly photographers that I see on G+
It could end up being a niche thing and who knows, slowly expand out from there.
It violates one of the obvious lessons from Google's other launches - scarcity. Remember how you needed an invite to do GMail or Google Voice? I think they forgot the value of building a community by making it feel cool, exclusive and alternative. But perhaps at this point it's as easy for Google to create a product that feels cool and exclusive at it is for Microsoft.
How soon we forget... Google Plus did have an invite-only period. It lasted about 3 months. I was passing out invites as fast as I could. It started out with about 15 invites per account and grew from there. I'd be surprised if I didn't send you an invite for G+. ;)
Everybody I know who actually posts to G+ is promoting something. Most of those seem to be SEO's. Of course it could just be I'm hanging out with a bad crowd. ;)
I'm trying hard to spend more time on Google+ and less on Facebook. It's interesting that if you add people to the right circles there can be some useful information in there with all the crap filtered out.
I think eventually it will carry a lot more importance for everything that happens on Google owned web properties, they have made a big bet on it, and let's be honest what intrinsic value is there in likes from spammy web profiles.
Stumble upon is getting a punishment there too...