This is an extremely well put article. The series of events and the way that it was written kept me reading it to the end. It was a very interesting article.
I agree on the backlash against facebook, I think this would be understandable user behavior. The problems I still have with Google+ are two:
1. the name, there is not a simple way to make it a verb, would you say you are "plusing" or how would you say that you want to plus me?
2. it would be difficult for it to become as popular as facebook because there are alreasy lots of social graphs in facebook already established. The argument that users would change because of the privacy TOS is flawed, because many users don't care about the privacy stuff.
"2. it would be difficult for it to become as popular as facebook because there are alreasy [sic] lots of social graphs in facebook already established."
A few points to consider:
1. I'm not an early adopter, of anything, ever.
2. I've managed to mirror 100% of the Facebook contacts I give a shit about in Google+ in less than 24 hours, with substantially improved organization & compartmentalization, not to mention a noticeable lack of ads or Zynga spam.
3. A full third of my FB contacts have requested a G+ invite as soon as they heard I was already in.
4. All of the people I've invited or otherwise added to my circles are active in their G+ accounts.
1. I think Google's ultimate goal is to bring you into an environment where you are just "Googling". This is evidenced by the top bar whenever you are on a Google site. They aren't trying to make it so that you are actively participating in a social media site like when you are facebooking, they are trying to make your entire presence on the net a social experience. There is no need for you to be "plusing" as you will be "plusing" simply by being online. No longer do you need to have a tab left open for your Facebook, your social media experience is fulfilled by leaving your email open.
2. One interesting counterpoint to this is how Google+ is growing. Certainly there are some people coming from websites/forums asking for invites but I would bet money that at least as many are coming from people posting on facebooks themselves. Facebook's own established network is working against them here.
The privacy debate is really not that important in the end. People who care about the privacy will end up posting on their facebook and inviting their friends to try Google+ (which they most likely will, it's a Google product afterall) and once they are on Google+ they will either like it more than facebook or they won't (because we have already established they don't care about the privacy aspects). In the end it comes down to which one can provide a better experience for most users and Google+ once again has the lead here because of how it can insert itself into your entire online experience.
I agree with you, in that the seamless integration into the Google experience is definitely a plus (I could not help adding the word "plus" into the sentence).
I don't think Facebook will always be as relevant as it is today. I think it's relevance will eventually fade away, and be replaced by something else. But, I just don't think it will be replaced by something like G+.
I can see G+ becoming more and more popular. But not becoming as relevant as facebook for social.
For registering a new domain I would recommend google apps, because of all the google apps integration to your domain. And if you are looking for server hosting I would recommend linode.
I also code and I love philosophy. It was not my major, luckily my love for computers seemed to have been just as strong, and I picked CS which is something that pays the bills.
