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How well do invite systems perform, of the style that gmail and other services famously used, where you need an invite to sign up and users get a certain number
by JoshTriplett 3y ago
How well do invite systems perform, of the style that gmail and other services famously used, where you need an invite to sign up and users get a certain number of invites to hand out? (They do a great job of rate-limiting user acquisition, such as if you want to ramp up slowly for resource reasons. The question is, how's the quality of users obtained through invite systems?)
- wcunning 3y agoSo it famously worked really well to create desire around Gmail, but it also famously didn't actually get anyone to use Google Plus or Google Wave. I was desperate for invites to both and then... never found a reason to use them? So it probably does better in terms of rate limiting than anything else. Maybe the right modern comparison would be Threads to BlueSky?
- ghaff 3y agoEveryone increasingly needed email at the time, people weren't especially wedded to their current email providers, and Gmail was arguably better than whatever they were using and free. Google Plus was a social network that never got widely used outside of certain circles and Wave was this new weird thing that never took off.
- coffeebeqn 3y agoThe free alternatives were also kind of ridiculous with terrible UX. Like hotmail was the best MS could do
- ghaff 3y agoYahoo wasn't terrible but Gmail was definitely better. I kept using Yahoo for a while as the address I used when I ordered stuff but over time Gmail tabs did a pretty good job of compartmentalizing email and it made more sense to just have the one address.
- JoshTriplett 3y agoDon't forget gmail having 1GB of storage at a time when most email providers offered a few MB.