Then again, Facebook did a slow rollout - first it was just for American college students, then (if memory serves) it was rolled out internationally for college

Then again, Facebook did a slow rollout - first it was just for American college students, then (if memory serves) it was rolled out internationally for colleges and universities outside the US, then finally it was available everyone. This helped build word-of-mouth. While a social network has value, so does an exclusive nightclub with a long queue around the block to get in. I've no idea, but I wonder if this was the thinking behind Google+. Build up a demand with artificial exclusivity, so you build buzz (maybe "buzz" is the wrong word, given Google's other dead project of that name). This approach also helps you from the technical side - easier to deal with scaling and other teething issues when you have a few users at once rather than the mad rush. At the end though it was probably the wrong decision - people were already on Facebook so they just shrugged and forgot Google+ existed.