Google Plus – The Rollout

I read this article on CNET. Google Plus has been around for months, now. I keep hearing about how fantastic it is, but most of us who clicked the ‘Keep Me Posted’ button or received invitations can’t join because they’ve ‘temporarily exceeded maximum capacity’ almost since the service began. I’m not sure that most of the famous bloggers/tech-heads who were invited to field-trial membership are not aware that most people simply never got the invite or weren’t allowed to fulfill an invitation. And while the president of Google may not be posting publicly, unless we’re in his circle, maybe we’ll never know whether he’s one of the 40% who have stopped posting publicly altogether, preferring to publish exclusively to specified circles.

Not having any real facts, I keep spinning queries in my head about what’s really happening. Like, why is Google dragging its feet on the wider roll-out? Is this thing really going to take off, or are they going to fold it up like everything at Google Labs? (I’m seriously missing ‘Fast Flip’ on google news.) On the other hand, I keep wondering if there is a desire amongst those at Google to keep the membership pool to something more exclusive — almost a club of tech/heads rather than an open forum. Then I think way out on the fringe — ‘Hey, wasn’t this released on April 1st? Is this just a massive on-going April Fool’s joke perpetrated by Google and web pundits together?’

If they do release it any time soon, I wonder if a lot of people will jump from Facebook the way they deserted MySpace. And if and when it does, will this be another time sink like Facebook? It might seem like sour grapes, but is this going to be useful, or is it just more clutter for our lives?

Follow up:

Google just went public with the larger roll-out on September 20, 2011. I have magical powers…