Metropol

I was lucky enough to snag an invite last night, before Google shut down the system, but I have to say that I really like the whole setup. The minimalist design of the site is fantastic, and I love the idea of circles.

There is one problem though-I have 1 friend on the whole thing, making it all a bit pointless, since I don't really know how the site works socially. Has anybody fared better?

No, I haven't got an invite yet, but TWiG had a whole episode last night about it where you can get a really good idea of it. Hangouts look really good, for example.

I'd be happy to send you all invites when Google resumes invitations.

Please! My email is my username on here at gmail.com.

I remember when I invited everyone to gmail back in the day.

Then everyone got invited to google wave. Wot a load of shite that was.

peterhewitt at gmail

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tvpres.uk (a) live.co.uk - thanks.

Looks interesting.

Pete wrote:Then everyone got invited to google wave. Wot a load of shite that was.

Google Wave was such a disappointment. More than when I realised Gmail paper was an April fools.

TBH, I can't really see the point of Google+. It's essentially a Facebook competitor at a time when Facebook is allready well entrenched and there is unlikely to be any mass exodus from it. Frankly, I'm surprised Google didn't just buy Facebook the way they've bought many other competitors over the past few years.

Incidentally, the Google+ launch has coincided with a relaunch of the Google homepage. It's hideous. Making an allready minimalist webpage even more streamlined I can live with and I don't mind the black bar, but what the fuck were they thinking when they went with that new smaller Google logo and smaller buttons? The small size and lower resolution make it look like you've got your browser set to zoom 75% - in fact when I first saw it I assumed that I'd mistakenly done that. Why at a time when display resolutions and resolutions of mobile devices are getting higher would Google want to go for something like this? It's stupid.

gav.scott at that place. gmail.

For a social site, it seems very silly to make it by invitation-only. They made the same mistake with Wave. Have a trial by all means - Facebook was restricted to one university in the beginning - but don't expect people to stick around with just a few contacts.

Jovis wrote:For a social site, it seems very silly to make it by invitation-only. They made the same mistake with Wave. Have a trial by all means - Facebook was restricted to one university in the beginning - but don't expect people to stick around with just a few contacts.

Conversely I read someone comment that the invite-only policy was "inspired" (or similar nonsense).

It does at least allow them to withdraw the product on the quiet if its shit (I predict shit), or gain viral penetration and desirability if its great.

Which of course *was* inspired when they did it with Wave - its just that Wave was shit, and that has soured the whole wheeze for me.

But I'd like to see for myself nonetheless.