And to your point, Google isn't making a facebook play but that is the only metric lots of people are willing to judge them by. I am just trying to drill home the point that it is the poster's interpretation and not Google's stated goal to have a use pattern like Facebook. Google doesn't need that.

Which, to some extent, is fine. I agree with the thesis fo the article that G+ is doing well. And for now, it's one of the best places for hackers to go and socialize off of news sites. It's slowly becoming more tedious as the hapless and advertisers start to realize how valuable it actually is.