I normally do too, but if there's a cool prize at stake I'll happily drag in 3 people on a splash page. Dropbox's +250MB incentive probably got me to invite m

I normally do too, but if there's a cool prize at stake I'll happily drag in 3 people on a splash page. Dropbox's +250MB incentive probably got me to invite more friends than I have to anything else (although they do have a great product that I probably would have told people about anyway). Not sure I agree with your first point. Sure, a truly revolutionary product (if those even exist) can gain users organically, but there's nothing wrong with trying to speed up that process. And for every one of those there are a hundred merely good products that can still be successful if marketed well.