and from what i remember, staying true to typical google fashion, they fucked it up by not opening up the "beta" when they had a critical mass forming behind it. then only to force everyone into having a profile a year or whatever later. lol, too late. i think most of us understood that anything associated with google is assumed to be a never-ending "beta", so no idea what they were thinking or waiting for.

[–] MetalFingers@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think it was definitely the super long beta period where you needed an invite killed it. I knew a ton of people who were interested that gave up

[–] kadu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's easy to say now, but Orkut (another Google social network, mostly used in Brazil) also had a beta invite system... And that helped it grow tremendously. The secrecy and "status" of getting invited made people go wild - they would even sell invites.

The strategy can work. It's just very timing sensitive.

[–] adude007@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Orkut was young when Facebook access was still restricted to college kids only. Google+ was dumb. You’d get and then it was just tumble weeds.

[–] Jeze3D@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Reminds me of Bluesky which is also in a permanent beta.