I think the general consensus I'm getting is that Google+ isn't necessarily a place for you to connect with your friends. I use it primarily to connect with people I don't know that share common interests. I suspect many others do the same.

Exactly. I see people with G+ profiles unknowingly making themselves available to the public through messaging. It's horrible.

Because obviously your experience is a much more reliable indicator for the overall state of Google+ than, you know, Google's actual numbers rollseyes

Because obviously you'd trust Google's numbers promoting their own service rather than your own experience rollseyes

I was stating my personal experience and how different it is from what the numbers suggest. I am sorry hear that you had to generalize on your own.

My own experience is the same. Our facebook page has over 2000 likes, our twitter feed has about 360 followers, but we only have 19 people following us on google+ (even though we've been on there for a year, post all the same things on google+ and promote our g+ page as much if not more than the others).

On a personal note none of my friends uses google+ (only my wife). They pretty much all use facebook.