I remember when they offered 1GB, was at a time when I think the standard hotmail was like either 10 MB or 100 MB, and they made the announcement on april 1st.

Then did it via an invite system.

You know now that I think of it, I wonder what would have happened if google plus had used a similar playbook to that. Seems like with gmail google knew the "exclusivity" was a selling point. Facebook grew big via similar strategies (only these special college students can get it, ok a few more colleges can), meanwhile google plus was "HEY, USE GOOGLE PLUS NOW, Oh you aren't using it yet, we made your youtube account a google plus account now, so now you have an account please use it now!

While social media in general is toxic. I do feel design wise google plus was leaps and bounds ahead of facebook at the time. Circles is IMO the feature that would have made social media actually semi-useful. (IE post your video game content to gamer friends, fun activities to friends, and not putting any job risking content to bosses etc...).