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We know how well that worked out for Google+
by enumjorge 4y ago
We know how well that worked out for Google+
- OnlineGladiator 4y agoIt worked for gmail. Maybe some people are too young to remember it was invite-only for years.
- mupuff1234 4y agoThat's because there was no competition and they were the first movers.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoHotmail preceded gmail by most of a decade.
- crazysim 4y agoNot with a 1GB (!!!!!!) inbox.
- thesuperbigfrog 4y agoI had a Hotmail account for about a year in 2000 or so. It had a 10 MB inbox and worked quite well. I got a bit of spam, but it was obvious and manageable. My girlfriend got a GMail invite from a friend and sent me an invite. It was huge. A 1 GB inbox, built-in Google search of your email, and incredible spam filtering. They marketed it something like "With GMail, you don't have to delete your emails. Just search . . .". Really killer features compared to their competitors. Later on, they added automatic email thread grouping which made using Outlook for work a chore until it got a similar feature.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoCoincidentally also why ChatGPT won.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gundmc 4y agoFor free email? That is patently untrue.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoNo one came close to gmail's 1GB free inbox at the time. Which kept increasing and showed you at the bottom of the inbox. Plus it had amazing spam detection, and was stupid fast, and got better and better very quickly. I remember having a gmail email was almost a litmus test to whether or not you were paying attention to what was going on in tech. Not having a gmail email indicated you might not be keeping up with the times.
- gundmc 4y agoAgreed on all your points! But I think offering a better service in an established sector is the opposite of "no competition" and being a "first mover".
- lotsofpulp 4y agoLike how we would say a professional sports player playing against an amateur has no competition. Technically, yes, but effectively... The context of the discussion is whether or not an "invite only" tactic works for building hype and launching a successful product. In that sense, I would attribute Gmail's success not to the "invite only" tactic, but to the fact that it was so superior that it had no competition.
- ribosometronome 4y agoI remember asking for an invite on what was probably a phpbb.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoGmail was objectively far, far superior than all the other competing email offerings, so people wanted to be invited.