Yesterday, Google launched a missile against Facebook with its own version of a social media platform called Google+. I was fortunate enough to get an invite from a Google employee so I got first crack at it before public-wide deployment. I’m going to assume you’ve also got in otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this!

At first glance it shares many of the same elements as Facebook but with a few small differences that I can see, at least for now. One of them is instead of groups on Facebook, you have circles. By default there are a few circles you can use to classify your friends like friends, family, acquaintances and so forth. Adding people to those circles is dreadfully easy, simply click and drag. Since it’s Google, it’s already integrated with your Gmail address book so you’ve already got a big list of people to start categorizing so Google can pick apart your life.

One of the things that is not so obvious is how to invite a friend to Google+. It’s actually not intuitive at all (unlike Gmail which had a specific “Invites left” counter). To do this, you’ll need to create a new circle or use one of the existing ones. I used “Following” since I didn’t really know what it was for. As a test, I had added a contact of myself, just with a different email address.

Now you’ve got a circle you want to send the invite to. To actually send it, you have to post a status update on the home tab. When you do, you will have the option to choose which circle you would like to share this information with. Add the circle you want to invite and you will get a check box that says something like “Also email 1 person not yet using Google+.” Then hit the green “Share” button and that person should be sent an invite.

These Google+ invites are selling like crazy now on eBay. I am not sure how many you can invite at a time, I’ve read it’s at a rate of one per hour. So don’t go and add 300 people you want to invite to a circle and attempt this. I’ve had other friends report that the email invite check box did not show up in these cases. If you are experiencing the same issues, then cut out everyone from the circle except one. Then try again. Also try again in one hour, you may have already invited a contact without knowing it. It’s certainly not very obvious here that an invite is being sent out.

If all goes well, your friend should receive an email like this:

Let us know if you’ve been able to successfully send invites and share any new things you’ve learned so we can all benefit. See you on the inside!