It's pleasant to read an article that makes the non-kneejerk case that Google+ is not a ghost town, that there are a lot of folk active on it, and if it's not beating Facebook … who cares?
(I will add anecdotally that I know several people who primarily, or even solely, post to private circles only — data that none of the public metrics can measures, obviously.)
I see no particular reason to abandon G+ at this point, and haven't seen any exodus of people I follow that makes me think I will any time soon. The only significant lack is an API for posting material — which is a conscious choice of Google's that limits some of the utility of the system even as it keeps it from being … well, an (automated) echo chamber of Facebook and other social media. (Now, if they'd just let me do it …)
Google learnt from Buzz which was trashed by its API alllowing it to be a dumping ground for Tweets / Facebook and all manner of crap.
I'm okay with not being able to straight-up cross-post; even when I share the same content on Twitter and G+, I'm going to take advantage of the space G+ offers to expand on it.
But I don't think the ability to schedule posts would be too much to ask. And it would be nice if, say, I could have them show up properly when embedded someplace like Storify.
+Richard Frost It's definitely a risk. But the reverse carries its own problem; I've seen content providers decline to use G+ or discontinue its use because of the manual effort to cross-post. I'm not sure the best answer, to be honest.
I'd love to have RSS feeds available via G+. I know that sort of breaks the "community" model Google wants, but I'd reforward / share a lot from there, and for me having to fire up a separate RSS reader is a step too far.