Focus on quality membership, not quantity.
At the moment, Google+ is a red velvet rope social network. If you’re not invited, or don’t have a Google account, you can’t get in. Even with new invite links, current members will only be able to invite 150 people for now. At first, the invites came in a trickle. On June 29th, the day Google+ first debuted, the Google+ invite door was shut, then reopened and the rush was on. Just like that, it slammed shut again until July 6th. The first users appeared to be mostly Googlers, tech insiders and heavy social network users.
“Invite-only is something Google stumbled into,” explains Korte. “When Gmail launched with invites, it was to throttle the growth. They had to throttle it because of server capacity. This is absolutely part of the strategy with Google+.”
Korte talks about the conversations on the ex-Googler email list the day Google+ was released. Some of the ex-Googlers had an invite button, others didn’t.
“There’s logic behind how many invitations are sent and who gets them,” he says. “They look at Twitter followers, how many people have in your address book. If you only have the coolest people, you keep the level up and it becomes an exclusive, desirable place to be.”
Keeping tabs on a smaller group of users also means Google+ can more easily ban spammers and phishers. This was part of the downfall of Orkut, Google’s attempt to compete with Friendster in 2004. To give you an idea of how popular Orkut is in the U.S., the last time VentureBeat covered the company was back in 2007. Google marketing learned from that mistake, and has kept a close tab on users who spam. They are promptly booted.
The limited release may seem like an obviously good choice, but it is also extremely risky. Power users span several social networks and have thousands of followers. If they didn’t like Google+, right off the bat, it could have sunk the product.
Pick up celebrities, and name drop like it’s hot.
CNN broke the story of a “celebrity acquisition plan” to help publicize Google+ three weeks after the network launched. CNN announced it had reviewed internal Google e-mails which indicated Google was creating a system to verify public figures who sign up for the service. The story was tipped off by Brett Schulte, a Hollywood consultant who said he discussed the project with Google employees. We’ve contacted Schulte for comment and are waiting for him to get back to us. (Isn’t strange that a Hollywood consultant is hard to reach?)
Schulte told CNN the idea behind the “celebrity acquisition plan” was to prevent people from impersonating celebrities and perhaps feature a button on legitimate profiles similar to Twitter’s “verified” stamp. Google won’t comment on this plan directly, but their actions are speaking loudly. We can speculate the real reason wasn’t to verify celebrities. It was to get non-celebrities to join just to see what all the buzz was about.
Right now Google+ is on a celebrity whirlwind. Obviously actor/geek Ashton Kutcher has an account. Actor William Shatner had his account suspended until Google+ could verify it (not bad PR for either party). Musicians ranging from Pit Bull to Mariah Carey are on there. Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina from American Idol visited Google to talk about Google+. Rock group My Morning Jacket just released their new music video exclusively on Google+. Seth Green went on Jimmy Fallon to promote his new show… and Google+. The Onion also picked up on the celebrity craze at Google+, publishing the story “Tim Duncan Sends Teammates Google+ Invitations for Fifth Consecutive day.” Politicians have accounts (except President Obama).
“This was nothing we did back when I was there,” says former Googler Korte. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were, though. They can head over to the YouTube channel to tap into celebrities. Google loves celebrities.”
(Photo credit: www.lollapalooza.com)
