Article: Inside Google+ – How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social (by Steven Levy)

Here is a good article by Steven Levy from WIRED.com on Google+.  It provides some background on the building of this product.  Some of the main points are:

• Google+ has two main “content sources”: sparks (where information about your interest comes in), and streams (where information from your social connection flows in)
• Google realizes that search result quality can be much improved with social/personal information and now is investing “orders of magnitude” more into social efforts
• Some of Google’s main assets: strong user loyalty, strong cash position for acquisition, and mastery in determining relevant information and links