Google+ is still the best social network that the world has seen.

But, yes, from what I understand they could hardly have botched it more if they tried.

I'm thinking of details like using the opportunity to latch onto Facebooks "Real Name policy", and using the same name as their deeply unpopular single sign-on solution + killing their existing social network at the same time.

There was no reason for the average user to switch from Facebook. Arguably, it was worse than Facebook due to poor UI: I could never make my wife understand the value of circles, it was simply not the way she thinks about her contacts.