Wondering how to have a private conversation with someone on Google+ in the absence of Facebook-style messages? Here’s how:

1. Type a message, add a link, upload a picture; or whatever, into your stream.

2. Remove any recipients currently in the sharing options in the field below by clicking the X at the end of the box.

3. Start typing the person’s name, it should automatically show you people with that name.

4. Click the person’s name to set it.
5. Click the Share button.

Now only you and that person will be able to see the thread.

If you want to check this, you can click the ‘Limited’ link next to the post, it will show you who can see it.

You can also double-double check by going to your own profile and typing the name of the other person into the ‘View profile as’ box.

You should still be able to see your post.

Now type someone else’s name into the box: the post will disappear.

So much so that he probably inadvertently invented it.

“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.”