This might sound dumb, but it's not really obvious how I add people I know to my google profile as a "friend". With facebook, it's dead simple and it makes sense why you would do that.
The searchengineland article explains it: http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-fac...
As far as I understand, things from connected accounts is the social connection. The friends are your buzz friends (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong).
I assume I have to connect an account here: https://profiles.google.com/connectedaccounts
But then don't my friends have to do that as well? I don't really see why they would.