Google Now Lets Those In Google+ Offically Invite Others

Already in Google+ and want to let others in? Google’s now allowing this.

Just look to the bottom of the right-hand side of your stream. You should see an invite icon, like this:

Select that, and you can invite anyone you like!

About 30 minutes ago, this post covered an alternative way to doing invites before this official way became available. That’s below, for the curious:

Officially, Google+ users still have no way to invite other people. Unofficially, it appears they can.

Big credit here to Jennifer 8. Lee, who I noticed tweeting today about how she’d sent out hundreds of invites. I thought that was odd, since Google said there are no invites available.

Scott Karp told me that yes, one of the invites he’d gotten from Lee worked. So what’s up?

Google+ allows you to share content with anyone who has an email address, even if they aren’t in Google Plus itself. If you do this, that person receives a copy of what you shared.

For example, I shared a post called “test” to myself, using an alternative email address. Here’s what arrived:

When I clicked on that “Learn more about Google+” button, I was taken to a page where I was invited to sign-up for Google+ using this alternative address.

In short, if anyone sends something out of Google+ to those not already in it, it appears Google is letting some of those people in.

Why do it this way, rather than give out invites? For one, I suppose it helps ease some of the pressure off those already in. If they’re sharing with people they already have in their contact lists, then perhaps Google feels they’ll be more engaged than if people are just handing out invites to those who ask directly.

Lee has more tips on how those in the program can invite others, appropriately enough, in a Google+ post here.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: Overnight, Google has removed the invite feature. Google’s Vic Gundotra said in a post on Google +:

We’ve shut down invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way. Thank you all for your interest!

For any who wish to leave, please remember you can always exit and take your data with you by using Google Takeout.

It’s your data, your relationships, your identity.

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Related Topics: Google: Google+


About The Author: is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

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  • http://www.KristiBug.com Kristibug

    This is going to make everyone go crazy! Is there a limit, I wonder?

  • http://webweenie.blogspot.com Stephen Allen

    It was noticed before that. And anyways Google has enabled an invite mechanism available on most users pages now, on the right hand side.

  • http://www.monicawright.com monicawright

    Just saw this on Twitter: http://content.screencast.com/users/kellyhclay/folders/Jing/media/c531e5a1-c83b-4623-8ddb-f44ccb440e55/2011-06-29_2056.png
    But I find it odd that they would open the flood gates, then close them, then risk having a backlog of invites waiting to happen. THen again, the exponential mad rush has been nuts all evening.

  • http://j-town.co.il Charlie Kalech

    http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1265985

    \Google+ is in limited Field Trial. During this time, when you share something with people who aren’t yet able to use Google+, they’ll receive it via email but won’t be able to comment or engage with the content like other Google+ users. They’ll be able to join Google+ as we let more users in over time.

    \If you’re not yet on Google+, you can sign up to stay updated here. \

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