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