Google has stopped inviting people to try out the new Google+, apparently due to its popularity. Google’s SVP of Engineering explained the move in a Google+ post: “Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way.”
You can look at this a couple of ways and around the various Marketplace tech heads there has been various notions floated (Yay! Floating notions!)
One is that it speaks poorly of Google to have a new Facebook killer that doesn’t scale. If you have a new thing that could be really big and you’ve invested a lot in it, why throttle demand?
After all, you don’t have to manufacture, it’s all web!
On the other hand, you don’t want to make it huge and then have it break in a huge way. Already a few minor glitches have been found and Google is working to patch them while this is still small scale.
Also, scarcity – whether real or artificial – drives up value. I finally got my invite last night and I feel like I got past the velvet rope. Not sure if that metaphor holds up. I’m a dad of three and live in Minnesota, not sure I’ve been in a nightclub in the past 15 years.
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