A purported mishandling of Google+ invitation links that keeps them from surfacing on Facebook user news feeds has resulted in a "he said, she said" match between the two companies. A video that was posted earlier today on YouTube by a Google employee depicts an unusual behavior, with Google+ invite links that have been shared with Facebook friends not showing up in the news feeds of other users, despite appearing to do so once posted.
That video was linked to by Vic Raimundo, the senior vice president of social business for Google, in a Google+ posting earlier today, with the note that the company was "getting reports" of the behavior. "I wonder how widespread this problem is?" Gundotra asked.
The problem, in this case, is that the link urges users to come try out Google's flashy new social network, which competes directly with Facebook, leading to speculation that Facebook would somehow be hiding these links intentionally. Speculation on the other side suggests that the complaint is part of a Google gimmick to have users mistrust Facebook while giving Google+ some free marketing.
In a chat with The Daily Beast, Bradley Horowitz, who is Google's vice president of product management, told the outlet that Google hadn't gotten in touch with Facebook about the issue, to which Google says it was alerted by users.
"Users are curious, and they're asking us if we know about this," Horowitz told the outlet. "We're interested to find out if this is an anomaly, or if this is a consistent experience for users. It could just be a bug. It's impossible for us to know."
According to Facebook, though, there's no problem.
"We have seen the video but have been unable to replicate the experience it shows," a Facebook representative told CENT in a statement. The company also once again detailed how its display-filtering technology, which surfaces news to user feeds, has built-in safeguards to keep potential spam out (emphasis mine).
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