I don't understand the "google are pushing this while it's still beta" thing. Google have mentioned + and if you look around you'll find it, but they are hardly making noise themselves. It's more the techbloggers that have been making the big song and dance about +, which is why at the moment I'm using it to communicate mostly with my workmates rather than my non-techie friends. When they get some of the features bedded down and they're comfortable with server loads then they'll open it up to everyone and really start pushing it.