It's kind of weird to claim they tried to foster adoption with the whole real name thing going on. Google was nuking accounts if they decided something was not your real name, and destroying e.g. a gmail account for someone who decided to join Google+ with the same name. Any cry for help was met with the usual Google Wall Of Silence. After a few very visible failures, people got the message quickly: Stay away from plus if you have any other valuable data in the Google world.

I still wonder what they were smoking. If you want users on your platform, not banning them randomly seems a good start.