Now, you can invite your friends to the new social networking site from Google, Google Plus , simply by providing a short link, which you will be able to post on the web or share with your friends via instant message. Google product manager, Shimrit Ben-Yair, informs users that in order to get the link, you simply go to the right side of your stream—the same place invites were found previously—and click the “invite friends” button.

Users will now have the ability to invite 150 people to the network. This is a lot more convenient for users than manually entering in e-mail addresses, which was necessary previously. Now, if you are a Google Plus user and you want to give out invites to a bunch of people,  you can simply post one link for everyone, which is nice.

While you can tweet the link if you want to, you will have to shorten the URL yourself to make it fit into Twitter. Many users are wondering why Google didn’t just go ahead and shorten the URL using their URL shortening service. Either way, this is still a great way for Google Plus to get more users.

A new scam on Facebook has already claimed thousands of victims. The scam centers around the new social network, Google plus, and all of the buzz it has been generating. The scam is a fake application called “Google Plus Direct Access.” It prompts users to visit a page on the site that they need to “like” in order to see. When they do that, they are handing over personal information to unknown developers of the dodgy app. Users are then offered a fake invitation to try out Google Plus in exchange for spamming their friends with invites to try out the app.

This offer is not real, of course. There is no such offer that exists. In reality, users will only promote the app, which will then falsely claim that it offers a means to “invite 50 friends” onto Google Plus, which is clearly not true.

The whole scheme could easily be altered just a little bit to instead promote sites that harbor malware on running privacy-threatening survey scams. This scheme is already serving as an efficient spreading mechanism. It has been reported that this Facebook scam has already gained more than 15,000 fans in less than a day.

These kinds of Facebook scams are quite popular. They are preying on people’s curiosity and using publicized events and trending topics. Social networking users need to be careful also about what applications they allow as many of these applications are allowed access to your Facebook records. There’s no telling what they are planning to do with your information, but it’s wise to just be careful about these sorts of things.

If you have suspicions about something on Facebook, it might be a good idea to run a general Google search on it. Doing this will usually tell you if it is a scam or not.

The invitation button on Google plus has been available for more than a day. This suggests the Google is now loosening up. This also suggests that Google is more confident about expanding the new social network’s population.

Stephen Shankland of CNET.com wrote about this as he said, “Of course, the company can still throttle the rate at which it delivers those invitations or the rate it signs up the new members when they open their invitations, but the relative ease I’ve had inviting folks to the service since Friday indicates to me that Google is loosening up.”

Initially, only a select group of Googlers as well as people in the media industry and tech critics were the only ones who received invitations. The demand to join Google plus, though, skyrocketed after that. Since then, they have opened up the invitation process.

Google plus is letting the new social network grow slowly, though, so that spam is less possible. Google plus wants to avoid viruses and spammers. Google plus cannot compete with Facebook yet, though. Facebook has hundreds of millions of users whereas Google plus has millions so far. It will be interesting to see if Google plus eventually gets bigger than Facebook, replaces Facebook, or serves a different purpose than Facebook.

One of the clear things about successful social networking and social media sites so far has been that each social networking site serves its own unique purpose. Twitter is for quick and witty banter, often from celebrities, and Facebook is for sharing content like photos, videos, and webpages. As Google plus grows, it will undoubtedly find its own niche and distinct purpose in the social networking world. I think it’s going to be a more casual environment where friends can share information and hang out.

Because there is such a huge demand for Google+ invites among internet users, many scammers are taking advantage of this. If you are seeking a Google+ invite, you need to make sure you know what to look for so you don’t end up at a fake pharmaceutical spam site.

On the NakedSecurity blog, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, warned that spammers are currently sending out fake Google+ invitations that will then direct users to online pharmacies. It’s tricky because the message does look similar to the actual e-mails that a user might receive from friends who have accounts on Google+ already.

So far, Google+ has only been launched to a limited audience, and users have been allowed to invite their friends to join. As you can imagine, there has been a lot of interest and a high demand for these invitations. People have even been searching on eBay for invitations.

Scammers are taking advantage of this high demand by sending these fake invitations in the hopes that users will get the pharmacy sites in their quest to check out the hottest new trend in social networking, Google+. The online pharmacy offers drugs like Cialis, Viagra, and Levitra.

These kinds of fake invites and e-mails have been present before. When Myspace was more popular, for example, there were some scammers who set up a login page that looked exactly like the Myspace login page but actually had a different URL. Many users didn’t pay attention to the URL, though, and just entered their login information as usual. Then scammers would have their e-mail addresses and possibly access to other account information.

These kinds of scams can be relatively harmless where your e-mail address is just being collected for future spam e-mail campaigns. On the other hand, they can also be harmful, sometimes stealing credit card or password information.

The best way to prevent this is to pay attention and be aware of what sites you are visiting and links you are clicking on. When you enter in password, personal, account, or credit card information, double check to make sure you are on a reputable website. Double check the URL and make sure the URL address is what you think it is. Double check the website you are on to make sure there is nothing suspicious so you won’t fall prey to these scams