Skip to main content

Google closes Google+ invite loophole [update]

Google Plus
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For a few brief hours Wednesday evening, Google allowed current users of its newly unveiled social network, Google+, to send out invites to whomever their hearts desired. That option was swiftly shut down, however, after an sudden onslaught of people came rushing to the site in hoards.

“We’ve shut down invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand,” announced Google’s head of social media Vic Gundotra on his Plus profile. “We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way.”

For the most savvy Google+ users, however, there was another way to let their friends join: rather than send an invite the official way, all a Google+ user had to do was share a post — message, link, photo, anything — with a non-Google+ user by entering in their email address. When the recipient got the email notification that a post had been shared with them, a link at the bottom took them to a signup page for Google+. And voila, they were in.

Not anymore*. Our tests show that Google has shut down this very exploitable loophole. At the time of this writing (1pm EST), anyone who tries to sign up for Google+ will receive a message that says registration has exceeded the limit. From what we can tell, that includes anyone who tries to sign up, whether they have an official invite or not.

There may, however, be another way — but it won’t work immediately. One of our contacts on Google+ tells us that users can simply create a new “Circle” (which Google+ uses to organize user contacts) and add Gmail IDs to it. Those users  should receive an email invite within 24 to 48 hours. We have yet to confirm whether this work.

Regardless, if you want to get in on the Google+ action, you’ll have to wait until they re-open the floodgates. Which could happen at any moment, so be ready, ’cause you’ll have to act fast.

*UPDATE: According to the chatter on Google+, the share loophole is still working for some people, but not others, so it’s at least worth a try. Let us know in the comments if you’re successfully able to join.

Topics
Andrew Couts
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Features Editor for Digital Trends, Andrew Couts covers a wide swath of consumer technology topics, with particular focus on…
WhatsApp now lets you send self-destructing voice messages
WhatsApp logo on a phone.

If you’re on WhatsApp and regularly make use of the view once feature for photo and video messages, then you might be interested to learn that the feature has now been expanded to voice messages.

WhatsApp’s view once feature does what it says, deleting a message after it’s been viewed a single time. It’s been available for photos and videos since 2021, but now you can also send voice messages that can only be played once before they, too, disappear from the app.

Read more
X rival Threads could be about to get millions of more users
Instagram Threads app.

Threads -- Meta’s rival to X, formerly Twitter -- has just launched in the European Union (EU), a market with nearly half a billion people.

The app launched in the U.S. to much fanfare in July, with Meta hoping to attract X users disillusioned with the turbulence on the platform since Elon Musk acquired it for $44 billion 14 months ago.

Read more
X (formerly Twitter) returns after global outage
A white X on a black background, which could be Twitter's new logo.

X, formerly known as Twitter, went down for about 90 minutes for users worldwide early on Thursday ET.

Anyone opening the social media app across all platforms was met with a blank timeline. On desktop, users saw a message that simply read, "Welcome to X," while on mobile the app showed suggestions for accounts to follow.

Read more