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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