I also think the hype you're talking about only happens in a very small group of geeks. The average guy on the street still hasn't heard of Google+, and until he has and is willing to try it out, Google will lose the social war. Convincing the fb masses to bother is an extremely difficult task, and Google will need all the hype it can get. Right know, I think they're doing exactly the right thing.

So you're saying that if people don't like Google Plus, they are going to stop clicking AdWords, move their email to Hotmail, and start using Yahoo for search? That seems very unlikely to me.

This is just a regular product launch. It gets a lot of hype because people like their friends but hate Facebook.

My point was that Google is putting a lot of effort into competing with Facebook, and that they're willing to use all their other products to succeed with Plus. Think about their bonuses being tied to social, Larry Page as the new CEO, the +1 button in the search results, the renaming of Blogger and Picasa, the redesign of Calender, Gmail etc., the new notification bar accross all Google sites... These aren't just regular product updates, but show how serious Google really is about getting into social, ie keeping facebook at bay.

At least the bonus structure for employees is tied to meeting the company goals on social: http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/08/larry-page-google-reorg/

So yes, Page has spun the ship's wheel... expect the boat to turn sharply.

Do you think that person is going to try to get in again later? Probably not. And with only a handful of my invites getting in, my feed might as well be twitter with a lot of big public figures I followed. There's nothing personal there.

It's a stupid way to launch a social service. Social is nothing without my network. So far I have to rate google as still not getting social.

Well, they aren't, really. They're just using you to test their system, which I can understand.

Personally, if I got an invite, I'd use it to look around a bit, and then wait for the whole thing to completely open up before actually starting to use it (which would make me a poor tester from Google's perspective).

But not opening it up - as you say - risks expectations that are too high as the buzz continues to build.

Mind you - I never heard anyone complain about the quality of the iphone after they waited in line several days before hand. Not saying the google+ will meet expectations in the same way. But you know - it's seems preferable to have maximal buzz than minimal in just about all scenarios.

When you stand in a queue, you know how long you have to wait. It's fair as everyone knows their position in the line.

G+ is a queue where instead of letting people in according to how long they've waited they pick some people at random from the queue, even if those people have been standing for just a few minutes at the tail of the queue. Nobody knows how long they have to wait.

Limited invites would have been far better - same way they rolled out Gmail. The problem is that the crappy invite system is turning people off - they try their invite, it doesn't work and they don't come back.

I've decided not to bother any more with G+ right now. Maybe I'll come back to it in a few weeks or so but right now it just seems to be full of hard core geeks - the same people I follow on HN or Twitter anyway. None of my immediate friends or family are there so there's very little to keep me there.

Oh dear God do I get sick of hearing complaints about the "illusion of scarcity" every time somebody can't get something obviously in demand.

Do you have any idea how many moving parts there are to something like this?

The only message I get from your post is that you can't separate your opinion from reality (like so many others).

Twitter is living proof that if your service is compelling enough people will put up with a LOT of unreliability (and in the context of a network like Twitter, FB, or G+, compelling means 'are there many people I personally want to interact with it on the service'). Will they also put up with a brick wall keeping them and/or their friends and family out (regardless of why it exists)? Will they tolerate the extremely confusing UX (even from a techie's perspective) that goes along with trying to scale that wall? I guess with Google+ we will find out one way or the other.

My main beef with Google+ isn't even that it is limited right now (though that does suck for a 'social network') but rather that the invite system doesn't make any kind of rational sense and the funky way it works isn't properly communicated to users at all.

From a public relations POV though it's very poorly handled. A better, fairer way would be to give each new member 1 or 2 invites, not hundreds or thousands, and ensure those invites work. I've sent invites out to friends and family a week ago and none are working, so they shrug and go back to Facebook - G+ has become last week's wonder.

Most annoying is the continual "invites open now!" posts popping up here and there - and you know that they won't work for you.

Technical issues or not Google could have and should have had a fair and transparent invite system in place.

And G's announced goal of minimizing bugs (as the user base scales) seems legit.