How to send Google+ invitations without an actual invitation

Google’s latest effort in being social seems to be catching on among very early adopters as reviews and impressions of the service has been largely positive.

Unfortunately for those who are waiting to be invited, Google suspended invitations yesterday afternoon citing insane demand. Well, this has always been Google’s way of creating, maintaining, and prolonging hype after all, because if anyone knows anything about scaling, it’s Google.

Regardless, there’s a way to be invited to Google+ without actually being invited and that’s through email.

When you share a post on Google+ you have to set the recipient before posting. You can select specific circles of contacts or share to email addresses as the intended recipient. By sharing your post via email, the recipients will be able to see what you posted on Google+ on their email and if they follow the link that says, “Learn more about Google+”, they’ll get taken to Google+ to activate their profiles.

Naturally the recipients need to already have a Google/Gmail account, Google Apps apparently doesn’t work with Google+, yet. This trick also doesn’t seem to work when you’re sharing using the mobile interface so if you want to test it, make sure you’re using the desktop interface.

This isn’t a backdoor but a feature according to Google+ engineering director Dave Besbris who posted about it yesterday on +.

We’ll post what we think about Google+ later. In the meantime, go try this trick if you want to get more of your friends on Google+.

Update: looks like Google shut down this invitation method the day after we put up this trick despite what Besbris said. Those who haven’t managed to sign up will now have to wait until Google opens its doors again