If they found a good way of incorporating RSS into Google+, that would certainly be an incentive to use Google+; but just adding RSS feeds to a circle in Google+, as this article suggests, would be terrible. Google+ (like Facebook and Twitter) works on a "forget by default" system, where, if you don't consciously make a choice to save an item for reading later, it gets lost off the bottom of the feed. Replacing Google Reader with that would be a bit like replacing a DVR with a system that broadcasts all your favourite TV shows at once.
I think if I wanted to disrupt social networking, I'd work on something like a DVR for social media shares (or, perhaps, a more socially-integrated service like Pocket), which allows you to specify certain content as content you don't want to miss.
Actually, when I visit various discussion communities on Google Plus, it has a count of the unread posts in the various areas of the community. So they have read tracking in Google Plus, although not in the default display of the main feed. Not sure Google wants people reading outside content anyway, though, compared to interacting inside a locked in Google Plus community. They are pretty anti-standards lately.
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If they found a good way of incorporating RSS into Google+, that would certainly be an incentive to use Google+; but just adding RSS feeds to a circle in Google+, as this article suggests, would be terrible. Google+ (like Facebook and Twitter) works on a "forget by default" system, where, if you don't consciously make a choice to save an item for reading later, it gets lost off the bottom of the feed. Replacing Google Reader with that would be a bit like replacing a DVR with a system that broadcasts all your favourite TV shows at once.
I think if I wanted to disrupt social networking, I'd work on something like a DVR for social media shares (or, perhaps, a more socially-integrated service like Pocket), which allows you to specify certain content as content you don't want to miss.
Actually, when I visit various discussion communities on Google Plus, it has a count of the unread posts in the various areas of the community. So they have read tracking in Google Plus, although not in the default display of the main feed. Not sure Google wants people reading outside content anyway, though, compared to interacting inside a locked in Google Plus community. They are pretty anti-standards lately.
like... circles? and tags?
In Twitter, you can make it send you a text message whenever specific users post.