As Google+ stalls invites, Zuckerberg promises "something awesome"

San Francisco: Within two days after Google Inc launched its social network Google+, the company stalled sending invites to users to join it.

The reason: “Insane demand,” said Google Senior Vice-President of Engineering, Vic Gundotra. The company had “shut down invite mechanism” for the Google+ service for the night, in a note Gundotra posted on Google+ on Wednesday evening.“Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way.”

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Google unveiled Google+ on Tuesday, marking the company’s boldest move to take on Facebook, the world’s No.1 social networking company. The new Google+ service follows a string of failed attempts by Google to crack the social networking market with products such as Google Buzz and Wave.

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A Google spokeswoman declined to say whether Google had resumed inviting people to join Google+ on Thursday or to specify what caused the suspension of invitations.

“We launched Google+ in a Field Trial in order to test the product out and gather more feedback,” Google said in an emailed statement.“As part of the Field Trial, we may open and close Google+ to new users at any time. We’re thrilled so many people are interested in trying out a new approach to online sharing.”

Meanwhile, in what seems to be a reaction to Google+, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced at theBoston headquartersthat his company is planning to “launch something awesome” next weekfor the over 500 million users of his social networking site.

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He did not divulge any further details.However, it is being speculated that the new feature to be launched could be in the mobile or tablet space.

A report in the Los Angeles Times said there are various mobile products in development at Facebook, including the release of a long-awaited Facebook app for Apple’s iPad and a specialised app for photo-sharing on the iPhone.“We are working on a number of exciting things that we have not yet announced, but stay tuned for next week,” the report quoted Facebook director of engineering Andrew Bosworth as saying.

Agencies