So, what's wrong with using circles for option 1? You'd rather like to have the posts public, but only to people with french browser settings? IMO that's asking a bit much, it's a functionality I'd expect from a good blogger platform but not a general purpose social media platform.
Note that I often feel G+ to be off as well, but for other reasons. One issue that sprung into my eye lately: There's absolutely no notification about new messages if you don't have any G+ apps or extensions installed. The logged in google page shows me notifications, which do not include messages, but rather useless clutter I don't care about. Is this Google's way of forcing people into installing their browser extension? It seems a rather big oversight to me.
Oh I see, 'subscriptions' as a counterpart to 'circles'. That's not a bad idea, it would also translate pretty well to Youtube channels. I guess they didn't introduce it since it would confuse many users 'what's the difference between circles and channels?'. They could have made it as an optional feature for publishers, i.e. only shown to users who enable it in preferences.
edit: Users who subscribe to a feed would always see the feature if the publisher has enabled it of course
Note that I often feel G+ to be off as well, but for other reasons. One issue that sprung into my eye lately: There's absolutely no notification about new messages if you don't have any G+ apps or extensions installed. The logged in google page shows me notifications, which do not include messages, but rather useless clutter I don't care about. Is this Google's way of forcing people into installing their browser extension? It seems a rather big oversight to me.