111–114 of 114 posts
I just was able to invite 2 family members, 2 friends, and several people who posted on my blog asking me how to get invites. I am out of invites now. I invited people who I thought would really use it. I must say that Google+ is very well done. I enjoy it every day. BTW, a little off topic, but I have blasted Google on several occasions about dropping Google Wave. Turns out I complained for nothing: the latest Wave…
Might just be me, but with Google opening and closing invitations like this all the time, it's not even "like Gmail all over again". It's much worse. With Google creating this much artificial scarcity to bring buzz, demand and publicity, they are really creating immense expectations and putting themselves up for slaughter. People are going crazy right now trying to get invites, to find the invites closed, their recei…
I can't help but feel like they really want this to succeed, and are betting the entire company on it. From what I've heard, Google+ has to potential to turn out huge. And making sure there aren't any bugs before letting everybody in is simply a must for them - They just can't afford to have any problems with this last attempt at social. I also think the hype you're talking about only happens in a very small group of…
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.
I think they should have given every new account exactly two invites, and see how quickly it grew from there. Then they probably wouldn't have to shut it down. That kind of artificial scarcity might have made the invite process a bit more fun, too.
If I had only two total, I could give it to folks who might ignore the invite, thus crippling my network (I would more likely end up hacking it by making numerous fake accounts and harvesting the combined invites... not that organic or desirable for google).
Might just be me, but with Google opening and closing invitations like this all the time, it's not even "like Gmail all over again". It's much worse. With Google creating this much artificial scarcity to bring buzz, demand and publicity, they are really creating immense expectations and putting themselves up for slaughter. People are going crazy right now trying to get invites, to find the invites closed, their recei…
Well - maybe it's marketing driven. But maybe it's testing driven as they claim. In a way it's a bit catch-22. If they let everyone in - and they run into problems - then they've obliterated themselves instantly. And that's just what happened with Wave. Invites weren't hard to come by... and people just bailed on it and didn't come back. But not opening it up - as you say - risks expectations that are too high as the…
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.