Google+ Demand High, Invites Shut Down Temporarily

Posted 06/30/2011 at 3:00pm | by Ryan Whitwam

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Googlers are probably heartily patting each other on the backs up in Mountain View today. After a successful beta launch of Google+, demand for invites to the social networking service has been high. So high in fact, that the invite program had to be cut off late last night.

After a few hours of users sending out unlimited invites, Google needed to give their servers some time to catch up. Google’s social chief Vic Gundotra said as much in a Google+post. “We’ve shut down invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand,” he wrote. We don’t konw when invites will be back up. There are some loopholes to get invites out, but it's not terribly convenient.

Google+ is packed with features at launch, so some users might be a little confused. Although, many are praising Google’s Circles feature that lets you sort contacts and curate the information you let them see. Users of Android phones are also getting some special features like group messaging and auto uploads of images and videos.

Considering the unmitigated disaster that was Google Buzz, this is going well for the Big G. Invites have even been on sale on eBay. Have you used Google+? How is it?