Member Avatar for Sariscos

Everyone and their mother is ranting and raving about Google+. I have a Facebook newsfeed of people begging to get on this new social network. Friends and colleagues of mine tried inviting me to no avail. Unfortunately the window to get on lasted less than a day. Now the system to get people on is completely shut down.

In my opinion, this was a terrible move by Google. Yes, you are getting a buzz and everyone wants to flock to your system. However, if you're setting up a social network and want people to use it, don't you think you should allow these invited people to get their friends on? I mean after all, how many contacts could you possibly have out of the limited number of profiles that's allowed to exist on the site?

I understand that they want to test a small segment. However, isn't the point of testing a website, especially a social media website to see how it will perform? I'm pretty sure heavy traffic is a great way to test new system. Nonetheless, if you want people to adopt something, especially early, you should make it available to a lot of people. Generally, the people receiving these invites are probably related to the industry the inviter is in. You would want to get a full spectrum of input, not just from a few select people.

In conclusion, I believe this is hurting Google's effort to get this out. People might be buzzing about it now, but if they wait too long, there will definitely be something else being buzzed about. I also wonder how this is going to affect market share of social media sites like LinkedIn & Facebook. Perhaps allowing them to prepare for this new product will enable the existing social media to stay ahead of Google.

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Dani AI

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As pointed out, the early Google+ rollout felt abrupt: invites went out, then the invite mechanism was shut down almost as fast as it opened. That was deliberate. Google launched Google+ as an invitation-only “field trial” in late June 2011, and then paused invites when demand spiked so the team could control growth and iterate. (venturebeat.com)

There are tradeoffs to that approach. An invite-only beta helps engineering and privacy teams catch bugs and tune capacity before a full rollout, but it also risks killing the network effect that makes social products valuable. Google moved from field trial to public beta on September 20, 2011 after about 12 weeks of testing, and added features (Hangouts, improved search) as it opened signups. (phys.org)

Longer term, the invite strategy didn’t save the product. Google later concluded the consumer product had low engagement (the company cited that roughly 90% of sessions were under five seconds) and revealed API bugs that exposed profile data; an initial bug analysis put the potentially affected count at up to 500,000, and a later review found a separate issue affecting about 52.5 million users — Google expedited the consumer shutdown to April 2, 2019. Those technical and adoption problems, not the brief invite window alone, ended up being the decisive factors. (blog.google)

Practical takeaways for teams launching social features: seed communities that will remain active after launch; publish a clear invite/timeline and gradual-open plan so early buzz converts to sustained activity; track retention and time-on-site (not just signups); and bake privacy reviews into launch gates. Those steps preserve both controlled testing and the momentum a social service needs to stick.

Member Avatar for Member #949455

Google+ Still Down: Bad Move

Thank you for your point of view regarding about Google+.

I don't have it but I know people who do.

They mention it's not much difference from having Twitter or Facebook.

So base on the answers, I do agree it is a bad move.

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