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Google+ will never have a user base to rival Facebook's. It just won't. Not even if you include the 'users' who create accounts so that they can use other Google services.

Google+ was, to my mind, all about creating a first-party data connection between Google most important services - search, mail, YouTube, Android/Play, and apps.

When I signed up for Google Plus, my reaction after playing around with it for a little bit was like, 'Huh, I think Facebook should be scared.' In part, because it's a really elegant product. It's very fast.

In January 2012, Google Plus started to roll out support for nicknames and pseudonyms, but those registering with a name other than their real-life one must be able to prove that they have been using that alternative name elsewhere, either on the Web or in real life.

As with Google, Facebook was a place that just concentrated a lot of top talent. It's just sort of natural that those people would go on and continue to be successful.

Google is about information and computers and making things really fast. Facebook is about the sharing and connections. These missions give these companies direction and motivation.

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected.

Trending topics helped make Twitter a more relevant metric of what the world was talking about at any given moment. Google has worked for years in the space, most notably with Google Trends and Hot Searches, but Google+ offers the search giant the ability to see what is truly trending in real time.

The great thing that guys like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and the Google guys have in common is they treat their technology like it's art, and I suppose in the hands of virtuosos like them, it is.

I actually think Facebook made it their business to be close with all of the app developers. They couldn't have done more.