Google+ official invites open up again

This evening, Google+ Engineering Director Dave Besbris confirmed that the official Google+ invitation system was back up following it being shut down due to "insane" demand last week. As a reminder on how to invite people to Google+ - there should be a widget on the right side of the page after you log into the social network to invite people.

However, please keep in mind that Google is still throttling invites, meaning that if there are too many invites in a period of time, the feature is disabled. Because of this, the widget to invite others may not be available at times.  

Hey Google+ folks!

As I bet you've noticed, we are facing pretty incredible demand for Google+ invites.

As Engineering Director of Google+, I wanted to take a moment to explain why we're growing the system slowly. First, we want to make sure our infrastructure scales so the service remains fast and reliable. Second, we want to ensure that bugs are fixed while there are still a relatively few people in the field trial.

Things are going well with the systems right now so we feel comfortable enough to open up invites for a brief period. Our goal is to double the user base in the field trial. (Sorry, we're not giving details about how many folks are in the field trial yet).

So, in a few minutes, we'll open up invites again. 

We continue to throttle invites, so please don't mass invite folks as it won't work. If you invite a handful of your most important friends and family you're much more likely to get these folks into our system.

Thanks again for providing so much wonderful feedback!

If you still need an invite, just email brian [at] itsalltech [dot] com and we will send you over one as soon as possible.

Google+ Invites Are Up Again... For Now

Google has been taunting its geeky fanbase with its on-and-off invite option; some of us were lucky and had invites when it was first launched; most of us had gotten in through the "backdoor method" (sharing photos or links with someone's email, and then getting them to click on Learn More about Google+ when the email account alert gets in). It seems like at 9:56am today, Google announced that they were reopening the invites in a few minutes, and based on tweets that have been circulating around. the news got out pretty quickly:

Google - As Engineering Director of Google+, I wanted to take a moment to explain why we're growing the system slowly. First, we want to make sure our infrastructure scales so the service remains fast and reliable. Second, we want to ensure that bugs are fixed while there are still a relatively few people in the field trial. Things are going well with the systems right now so we feel comfortable enough to open up invites for a brief period. Our goal is to double the user base in the field trial. (Sorry, we're not giving details about how many folks are in the field trial yet). 

So, in a few minutes, we'll open up invites again. We continue to throttle invites, so please don't mass invite folks as it won't work. If you invite a handful of your most important friends and family you're much more likely to get these folks into our system..

The invite option has also been officially added to the Homepage:

 

Concrete information is pretty scarce at the moment, and there's no official word on how many invites you can send out, or when it will close. Users who have been invited, head down to activate your account here. It is definitely a step forward in moving towards expanding Google+ and making further tweaks to the social network along the way based on user feedback. But with Facebook's announcement on Skype's video chat integration with Facebook just freshly out of the oven, it does come across as a supposed move to fight off the social networking giant.    

For the full story, click here.

To read more about our initial thoughts on Google+, click here.

To read about Skype's video chat integration with Facebook, click here. 

Update: And once again, the invite mechanism has been shut down. If you've missed the earlier wave, looks like you'll have to wait a while more.

How to make Google+ look like Facebook

You managed to snatch up a Google+ invitation and you even coaxed all your friends into joining that new corner of the Internet, but now you're suddenly missing the way Facebook looks. Time to give Google+ a makeover.

TechCrunch reports that you can very easily combine the new hotness of Google+ with the old and busted looks of Facebook by using a custom theme.

All you have to do is download the Stylish browser extension — a little plug-in which lets you tweak the look of a website — for either Firefox or Google's Chrome browser and install the Google+ : Facebook theme. And ta da! Now you can enjoy an odd blend of old and new social networks.

How to invite all your Facebook friends to Google+

You've managed to snatch up an invitation to Google+, the shiny new social network that everyone is talking about lately? Congratulations! Now how will you get all your Facebook friends to follow you to this corner of the Internet?

According to ZDNet, it'll take a clever — and slightly strange — trick.

You see, actually inviting your Facebook friends to join Google+ is mostly painless — once Google reopens the invitation process, at least — but there is one rough part: You have to enter or copy-and-paste the email addresses of your thousands of Facebook buddies into a pesky little form. That's a lot of clicking and typing!

So what's the alternative? A little workaround which will automate most of the process:

1. Sign up for a Yahoo! Mail account, and import all of your Facebook contacts. Click "Contacts” at the top, and then "Import Contacts." Authorize Facebook access to your Yahoo! address book.
2. Log in to Google Plus (http://plus.google.com) and navigate to your "Circles" (https://plus.google.com/circles).
3. Click "Find and Invite", and then click Yahoo! Import your Facebook friends to the "Suggestions" section.

Ta da! All your Facebook friends will now be listed on the screen and you'll be able to invite them to Google+ or drag their names (and faces) into the appropriate groups or "Circles."

Google+

Please note that Google has been sporadically shutting down the Google+ invitation process, so don't think you're doing something wrong if your friends appear in a new tab called "Selected" instead of instantly calling you because they've received an invitation email. That's just a waiting room of sorts. There you'll be able to double-click their names to see a prompt that allows you to send an invite.

Google+

How to transfer photos from Facebook to Google

From the moment the first Google+ invitation was sent, people have been rushing to find ways to transfer their Facebook friends and data into Google's arms. Naturally, this means that they have to move their photos too. Here's how to handle that step.

TechCrunch reports that a service called Move2Picasa.com will happily transfer your photos from Facebook to Picasa — the photo-sharing service linked to Google+ and soon-to-be-known as Google Photos.

All you need to do is head over to the site, log in with your Facebook account, and let your images travel over to their new home.

Naturally, there are a few catches to keep in mind.

For starters, it's an all or nothing situation — meaning that you can't pick and choose which photos to transfer. You're also going to have to wave goodbye to any captions, comments, likes and such as those won't make it over to Picasa. Other than that, it's a smooth move and requires no effort on your part other than some patience as things transfer.

Google+ teases world with slippery invites

Wednesday night, we jumped at a tweet from the unofficial but official-looking @GooglePlusTweet account that read "Google+ is now open to anyone with a Google account." But when we investigated, sending in one of our team members who has yet to be plussed, it seems that while Google did briefly offer sign-ups, it was no longer the case. So, is Google just teasing? Yes and no.

In a Google+ post, real actual Google employee Dave Besbris, engineering director of the social network, explains the throttling approach:

First, we want to make sure our infrastructure scales so the service remains fast and reliable. Second, we want to ensure that bugs are fixed while there are still a relatively few people in the field trial.

Things are going well with the systems right now so we feel comfortable enough to open up invites for a brief period. Our goal is to double the user base in the field trial. (Sorry, we're not giving details about how many folks are in the field trial yet).

So, in a few minutes, we'll open up invites again. 

We continue to throttle invites, so please don't mass invite folks as it won't work. If you invite a handful of your most important friends and family you're much more likely to get these folks into our system.

The take-home messages? Sign-up opportunities may appear periodically, but Google is not yet at a point where it will leave the front door wide open. And also, those of you who are blessed with the power to plus the unplussed should nevertheless exercise discretion (aka elitism, favoritism, chauvinism, snobbery).

GooglePlusTweet on Twitter

The fine print: Not an official Google+ Twitter feed.

As for those unofficial Google+ fanatics on Twitter, apparently at the moment they're trying to operate some kind of peer-to-peer marketplace for invites, with hashtag #needaninvite, if you want to try to enter intothat whole mess.

OK, enough chatter, I gotta get back to my Google+ account and spend some quality time hanging and circling before the riffraff flood the place.

Free Google plus invation

Google is betting that its new social network, Google+, will fix what it calls the "awkward" state of online sharing--but Google isn't sharing invitations to its latest project with everyone.
Users have been clamoring for invitations to Google+, which Google launched as a limited "field trial," noting "you may find some rough edges." Access to the project is currently by invitation only, and a limited number of users were given 15 invitations apiece to bring others on board.
If you're eager to begin trying out Google+ and can't find someone with a spare invitation, you can sign up to request a Google+ account here. Google has created an entry form that asks people to submit their first name and email address so they can stay posted as the service is rolled out more fully. "We’re still ironing out a few kinks in Google+, so it’s not quite ready for everyone to climb aboard," Google wrote. "But, if you want, we’ll let you know the minute the doors are open for real. Cool? Cool."
Google has also created a Twitter account, GooglePlus, that has been tweeting out information about the new service.
(UPDATE: The account has been suspended and was allegedly not an official Google account.)
This is hardly the first time that Google has created a buzz by limiting a new service to a select group of initial users. Like Google+, Google Wave was at first available only by invitation, as was Gmail.
Check out 9 things you need to know about Google+ here, then take a visual tour of the new social network here.