Yes, you read it correctly. And yes, I am as surprised as you.
Google’s social network has been released to the public after being in an invitation beta phase for only 90 days. Vic Gundotra, the Senior Vice-President of Social Business for Google, announced the following today:
“For the past 12 weeks we’ve been in field trial, and during that time we’ve listened and learned a great deal,” Gundotra said. “We’re nowhere near done, but with the improvements we’ve made so far we’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups. This way anyone can visit google.com/+, join the project and connect with the people they care about.”
The doors are open, it's time to enter.
A post was added to the Official Google Blog today under the name, “Google+: 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99… 100.” The numbers signify improvements made to Google Plus since the duration of it’s closed release; most were associated with Google+ Hangouts but the final number 100 was rather shocking, to say the least: Anyone can sign up for Google+—no invitation required.
What are you waiting for??
I can already foresee people claiming that Google have been forced to release their social network to the public earlier than planned because of slipping performances. I don’t believe this is the case though and it will be interesting to see how fast both the member count and interactivity on Google+ improves from this day forward. Facebook will no longer be able to adopt Google+’s ideas and claim them as their own due to everything being exposed to the entire online world now. Gundotra stated that Google Plus is “nowhere near done” but it looks like a very impressive start from what I’ve seen.
What do you guys think?
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