Google–

Every once in a while, I’ll click the Google+ bookmark I still have saved in my web browser (because bookmarking Google+ was the only way I could remind myself to use it). It’s a barren sight. There are a few new posts from the handful of tech bloggers I have circled and a few comics from The Oatmeal, but that’s about it. None of my actual friends have posted anything and no one new that I know has joined. Google+? No—more like Google minus.

Google spent months marketing its circle-based social networking site as a Facebook killer, but hey! guess what? Facebook is alive and well (despite the IPO fiasco). People might hate it—they feel like their privacy is violated and everything keeps changing—but they keep coming back to it.

It’s not because Facebook is a better website: I love the design of G+, and its user interface is simpler and less in-your-face than Facebook’s. It’s not because of brand loyalty, because I don’t think anyone has any special love for Facebook, Inc. It’s because Facebook is where our friends are.

While G+ is superior in a lot of ways (better photo sharing,better apps, less clutter), no one has any reason to use it as a social network until the “social” aspect of that phrase is actually fulfilled. People don’t join websites for the ability to interact with writers, celebrities and other public figures, unless they’re the kind of people who read Us Weekly or have somewhat unhealthy obsessions. But those are really your only options when using G+, because your friends don’t hang out there.

And the reason no one hangs out on G+? It’s no different from Facebook, benefits-wise. It offers all the same things Facebook does, only FB has almost a decade-long advantage. Why would we take hours out of our daily Facebook allotment to organize “circles” that don’t really change how we social network?

We already share photos, links, videos, random comments and thoughts; we already “check in” at all our favorite stop signs and busy intersections; we already monitor our farms, bakery shops, hot dog stands and whatever other games we play on Facebook. There’s no reason to start over somewhere else.

G+ didn’t have a simple user interface when it was released. No one could figure out how to message people, no one was sure how to share things directly with someone, and Instant Upload kind of creeped a lot of us out. First impressions are everything, and if we aren’t wowed, then it doesn’t matter what you change; we aren’t going back.

Critics and regular folk said G+ wouldn’t touch Facebook. Others said there wasn’t room for another social network at all. But then came Instagram and Pinterest. Instagram was already pretty popular among the iPhone crowd, but once it was finally released for Android it exploded. It had 1 million downloads in half a day and 5 million downloads in a few days. Then it was sold to Facebook for $1 billion, and everyone’s jaw dropped.

Similarly, Pinterest was one of the fastest-growing websites of all time and is now the third-largest social network in the U.S. While Instagram might give people the false impression that they’re photographers, and I may occasionally lose my girlfriend to Pinterest’s offerings of DIY Scrabble coasters and key lime cheesecake bars, I don’t mind. Both are novel, original ideas (though maybe not ideas worth a billion dollars, Zuckerberg).

There was room for a new social network; apparently there was room for two. But G+ wasn’t new. It was simply Google’s version of Facebook, and no one needed it. You can’t take a picture of your cat and apply a cheesy sepia filter to it on G+, or find recipes for gluten-free red velvet donuts. Instagram and Pinterest succeeded because they offered new features and different ways to interact with people.

While G+ has improved and will probably continue to do so, I can’t see myself dropping Facebook to use it. I can’t see millions of other people doing so, either. And until G+ steps up its game and offers something entirely new and worth buzzing about, people will continue to log a good chunk of their days reading their friends’ timelines.