Google+ is multiplying some notification e-mails

Many users of Google's new Google+ social-networking service, which is still in beta and mostly closed to the public, have been tweeting this afternoon about getting the same e-mail notification multiple times--some as many as 40 times or more.

"I just got 29 emails telling me that [another user] is following me on google +. What a weird glitch," writes Twitter user Nolongermusing, whose post was typical of those still streaming in Saturday afternoon.

It's hard to know just how widespread the glitch is. Google did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the problem. And while droves of Twitter users are talking about the problem, CNET staffers who are trying out the service haven't experienced the issue.

The Next Web, which appears to be the first publication to write about the problem, pointed out that it's even affecting users who have switched off e-mail correspondence in their Google+ settings. TWN points to Twitter user Daniel Obenshain, who said turning off notifications and re-enabling them seems to fix the issue.

Update at 11:19 p.m. PT: A Google spokeswoman responded by pointing to a Google+ post from Google's Vic Gundotra that went up at 5:16 p.m. PT tonight. Gundotra, the company's senior VP for social, wrote:

Please accept our apologies for the spam we caused this afternoon.

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.

We didn't expect to hit these high thresholds so quickly, but we should have.

Thank you for helping us during this field trial, and once again, we are very sorry for the spam.

Well, that explains it.