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They learned the wrong lesson from the Gmail invites. The artificial scarcity of Gmail invites worked better than their wildest dreams. People were selling invi

by SamBam 7y ago

They learned the wrong lesson from the Gmail invites. The artificial scarcity of Gmail invites worked better than their wildest dreams. People were selling invites on eBay, trading then, etc. It worked really well to generate buzz. So of course they tried to replicate it. But if you're the only Gmail user among your friends, you can still email them. As you say, if you're the only Google+ user, you have no one to talk to.

gravitas 7y ago
I really think the author missed this social point, and it's an extremely important one. As a tech nerd, I had fellow tech nerds who had G+ but I was unable to secure an invite, like many others. It was just frustrating and caused people to develop an anti-G+ attitude before they could even get onto the service. I distinctly recall a wave (lasted about... 2 weeks?) of serious internet hype where many contacts on Facebook saying they wanted to get on G+ to try and and get away from FB, yet could not get an account due to this rollout methodology. It's my personal opinion this was the shot they missed - you don't keep away the early adopters who will bring in their non-tech friends over time.
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  Speaking of wave, Google wave too. Really excellent idea, but if you couldn't collaborate with anyone but yourself (because of invites), you aren't really "collaborating" and all the benefits of wave are lost.
  - dullgiulio 7y ago
    Indeed, it's funny that Slack is going IPO these days and they have (in some ways) developed a successful Wave.
catdog 7y ago
In addition to that Gmail at the beginning was a really outstanding offering so people accepted the waiting time. It offered a massively better web interface than practically everyone else and really a lot of storage space. It took other free offerings years to catch up.
billfruit 7y ago
The invite strategy did work somewhat while they launched Orkut I think. The major difference this time was that FB was already well established, so artificially restricting access, meant people just ignored it and continued to use FB.

by SamBam 7y ago

gravitas 7y ago

I really think the author missed this social point, and it's an extremely important one. As a tech nerd, I had fellow tech nerds who had G+ but I was unable to secure an invite, like many others. It was just frustrating and caused people to develop an anti-G+ attitude before they could even get onto the service. I distinctly recall a wave (lasted about... 2 weeks?) of serious internet hype where many contacts on Facebook saying they wanted to get on G+ to try and and get away from FB, yet could not get an account due to this rollout methodology. It's my personal opinion this was the shot they missed - you don't keep away the early adopters who will bring in their non-tech friends over time.

jimktrains2 7y ago
Speaking of wave, Google wave too. Really excellent idea, but if you couldn't collaborate with anyone but yourself (because of invites), you aren't really "collaborating" and all the benefits of wave are lost.
- dullgiulio 7y ago
  Indeed, it's funny that Slack is going IPO these days and they have (in some ways) developed a successful Wave.

catdog 7y ago

In addition to that Gmail at the beginning was a really outstanding offering so people accepted the waiting time. It offered a massively better web interface than practically everyone else and really a lot of storage space. It took other free offerings years to catch up.

billfruit 7y ago

The invite strategy did work somewhat while they launched Orkut I think. The major difference this time was that FB was already well established, so artificially restricting access, meant people just ignored it and continued to use FB.