Google has apologised to users of its new social networking service after inadvertently spamming them with notification messages.
The company said a glitch occurred after the Google+ service that keeps tabs on notifications ran out of disk space.
"For about 80 minutes we ran out of disk space on the service that keeps track of notifications. Hence our system continued to try sending notifications. Over, and over again. Yikes," said Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of social for Google, in a blog post.
"We didn't expect to hit these high thresholds so quickly, but we should have."
Google was "very sorry for the spam," Gundotra added.
Google's so-called Facebook rival has been hit by a few minor snags since it was unveiled towards the end of June.
The most significant problem has not been of Google's making, but of spammers.
A plethora of phony Google+ invitations were sent out earlier this month, pointing recipients to the Canadian Family Pharmacy rather than the hyped Facebook rival.
Google has also been busy deleting company profiles from the service, but only in preparation for a bespoke business service, expected to launch before the end of the year.
Facebook, meanwhile, has been trying to cement its dominance in the social networking space, adding Skype functionality last week.
