Google launched its social networking site Google+ last week hoping to draw users away from major competitors, including Facebook.

The launch of the service was marked by a post on Google’s official blog, outlining the company’s vision for the service.

“Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online,” the post read. “Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools.  In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.”

The service’s interface design, spearheaded by Andy Hertzfeld who worked with the original Apple Macintosh team, incorporates more animations in its design than other social networking sites including heavy use of drag-and-drop.

The service has been launched in a limited “Field Trial” format, with only a select group of individuals—consisting mainly of technology experts and journalists—were initially invited to test the service and provide feedback.

Google had allowed those users to slowly roll out invitations of their own to friends, colleagues and even the general public but temporarily shut down invites due to the heavy demand.

Google stated that they had reached the limit assigned to their Field Test stage of the site within 48 hours of allowing invites.

Another possibility is that Google is attempting to drive up the desirability of the service through the restriction, while still ensuring strong press coverage based on those invited for the Field Test stage.

Google has not announced any details on when Google+ will open up beyond the Field Test stage, or when the service will be available to the general public.

Even with a limited audience, Google+ launched with a select set of features that Google hopes will set it apart from Facebook and draw users in.

One such feature, called Circles, is meant to allow users to share content with select groups of friends.

Users can create multiple circles for different types of people they know, whether it is a circle just for close friends, co-workers, family or acquaintances, akin to group names given to friends on Facebook.

When a user shares a link or picture on Google+ they can quickly choose to share it only with select circles they have created or to share it with everyone.

While the option to share with select groups is available on Facebook, Google is hoping that the level of customization Circles offers can set it apart.

The feature has already drawn criticism, as Field Test users reported a loophole of sorts that defeated the purpose of Circles.

Similar to the “share” button on Facebook, users are able to credit reposting pictures, links, etc., to the original user who shared it with them, defeating the purpose of only sharing to certain circles.

Another feature of Google+ directly integrates with Circles to allow users an easy way to video chat with members of any circle they create.

The feature, called Hangouts, allows users to jump into any ongoing video chats being hosted by members of any of their circles with up to 10 users able to video chat at once, without requiring the sending and accepting of invites.

Google plans to expand that number based on feedback they have received from the Field Test users as well as to accommodate businesses that may seek to use the feature for video conferences.

Google+ also comes with a feature called Sparks that is similar to the news feed on Facebook, but takes advantage of the algorithm’s that power Google’s search engine.

Users are able to save any search term, such as “CSU East Bay Sports,” into Spark which will then automatically use Google’s algorithms to find relevant content for the user.