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Isn't GMail a sufficiently powerful "private messaging" feature? You can send a message from anyone's profile if they've enabled the "Send mail" feature. Plus GMail already supports a federated protocol, so you can use this profile "send message" feature with any other mail system you want.

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Maybe it's just me, but email just feels way more formal and personal. I would have no qualms writing quick one-offs like "That was fun last night, we should do it again soon" on facebook, but I would never send an email like that.

Maybe, however, Google is trying to change that. E-mail is a perfectly fine choice for the protocol for such messages, but the UI has to change. Look at what they've done in the other direction, brining Talk and Buzz logs into Gmail inboxes, for instance. Why not reverse that and export certain kinds of mails received in a Gmail account out to the Google+ UI?

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