The talk of the net in the last few days have been Google+. Google’s new attempt at social networking. A new concept in hope to grab the masses and move them away from Facebook and into Google’s social bosom.

Like many others, I’ve spent some time and efforts to grab my own Google+ invite, in order to check Google’s new social endeavor. I went through the usual websites, blogs and contacts, though still curious to get some hands on experience with the new creation, I realized I’m not sure I actually want one. The current attempt looks more promising than Wave, Buzz or any of the other creations, but the entire premise of getting new users into the social network is completely flawed. This is because getting an invite opens the door to a social network where none of your friends is. Mainly because getting an invite has become an impossible mission, so what will you do in a social network none of the people you know is, and can’t get into even if they wanted? That’s the problem with limiting access to social services. They rely on the “network effect”, where the nodes of the network do the work of increasing the user base. The more end nodes, the faster the network grows. Meaning that a social network becomes increasingly useful as more of your friends join in. If they can’t join even when they choose to, why would you want to be there?

By limiting the number of users who can join Google+, Google is limiting the type and number of experiences those users who do use it will have. Early adopters have plenty of influence on mainstream opinion, in most cases, they are used to not having anyone in their network when they start out. But part of the advantage of being an early adopter is the ability to invite close friends and contacts, without that ability, all they are left with is a social network without anyone to be social with. What kind of experiences the early adopters will have on that wasteland of a network?

This begs the question, does creating hype using the limited invitation only model work in social networks really work? After all, social services depends on a large or at least open user base in order to work. Can you increase the interest of users? Or more accurately, for how long can you keep them interested before the limited invitation model collapse on top of your network that never had enough steam to get the minimum critical mass required for it to start growing? I can’t entirely figure out why Google’s opted for such a limited release. Surely it’s not technical reasons, I don’t think Google have server capacity issues.

Considering Google’s history with social services, the current move seems completely out of place. Maybe their marketing team thinks differently but Google+ is not Gmail, and what worked there will most likely have the opposite effect here. For now, the worst social service is the one users can’t access to, and at this point, time the worst social service is Google+.