Hangouts with Silicon Valley figures won't do anything to drum up interest in G+ except as a novelty among those that already know about it but don't use it.<p>Google should take the biggest stars of whoever wins the NBA Championship next month and do a hangout with them. Or have the stars of twilight/hunger games/{generic blockbuster} and do hangouts as part of their press junkets. Google may end up with a bunch of incredibly insipid hangouts but that's about 90% of "social" anyway.
First thing I noticed when reading about this on the Google+ Page was I couldn't click the date:time link and add the event to my gCal. Probably not a good event launch when it highlights an obvious product fault.
I don't see what's so wrong with what Facebook did. Go after college students. They probably wouldn't mind obsessively checking two social networks anyway.