Maybe they want to work out the kinks before having 10 million users instantly. The privacy aspect of this will be very important, and the Buzz launch is an example of how opening up to everyone at the same time led to a large backlash.

There's a pretty wide gulf between opening up and forcing it on people. You can't build a social networking sites if it isn't open to people in your users' social networks. But you also can't build a site people trust and want to use by forcing it on them.

You can get away with a lot more when you're a college student project than when you're a multi-billion-$ corporation.

It does not seem like the Facemash data was reused for thefacebook.

Page 6, specifically: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-so...

Now, if they make it so that invited users can invite a good amount of other users (say, 100), then I think they _may_ be able to salvage this. If not, I'm not predicting a good outcome.

I actually enjoyed the idea/concept of Wave, but I never had any reason to login and actually use it since I only had one other person I knew with an account. The same will happen to Google+.

If this product gets any traction, it seems like a near certainty that Facebook will launch a "Circles" UI for their groups feature, very quickly, no?

I understand why Google is taking it slow, but if the idea sounds like old news by the time Google lets me invite people, I suspect they're going to seriously compromise their odds of user adoption.

Had we been able to all get on at once, we might have found a killer app for it and never given it up.

I was, however, happy to see that some of the cool parts, like simultaneous realtime editing, made their way into Google Docs.

Come on, Google!

[from comments on http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/28/google-plus/]

Github did the same in fact they recommend people to do it, and they're very successful.

I agree it's a little frustrating but it's the kind of frustration that makes you go back when the site is open for signups and signup. Nothing bad... Google Wave might just be an exception of this technique and people didn't use it because of the complexity of the product not because it made them wait to get an invite.

Wave failed exactly because both of its complexity and its artificial scarcity Google created.

Google does so many things for many different people. Opening it up to the world outright is technically dangerous, but Facebook had a very natural progression for rolling out because they had identified and located their market. Google isn't so lucky. + is designed at the Facebook user base, but isnt considering the history or the trajectory of Facebook users.

I'd imagine the only reason google cares about social at all is because it is a significant source of revenue in an industry they want to own (advertising).

All that said I'm going to set up an account when it's my turn.

Otherwise, it's really not the same thing at all.

It's true that the invite system worked for gmail, but it's a bit different because gmail still has fundamental value if you are on it and literally none of your friends are.

But really, Wave was a fundamentally flawed project for multiple reasons: bad market fit, clumsy/complex UI, bad marketing, etc. I had a bad gut feeling about it since I saw the demo (which took 1 hour! That should've been a sign)

Google+ looks very exciting and it seems like they've addressed many issues social networks have had through out the years, including Facebook. The lack of a Circles like feature was a design flaw of all social networks so far, and I believe it led them to ultimately become irrelevant because of the sheer number of people that became your "friends" on those social networks, which ended up spamming you. Circles seems to fix this, and the other Google+ products looks awesome, too.

gogogo !

I don't know if this is the bug, but after trying three times with my full name, when I did this the 500 went away.

It will definitely help with the "I have an account but nobody else does" phenomenon.

When it first came out, the chosen few got invites, and they invited friends. Rinse, repeat.

If Google did not want to launch it to everyone at once, they should have probably gone geographically!

That’s the Google+ project so far: Circles, Sparks, Hangouts and mobile. We’re beginning in Field Trial, so you may find some rough edges, and the project is by invitation only

It worked for Facebook.

It'll work if the people there get invites - that way it'll gradually expand until it opens up to everybody.