RE: RE: Gmail invites (was: I Love GMail!)

midrange-nontech-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>   2. RE: Gmail invites (was: I Love GMail!) (albartell)
>
>The thing I don't understand is why doesn't gmail just allow people to sign
>up from the main page?  They are really into viral marketing this tooling.


Lots of thoughts come to mind. I imagine I haven't thought of various important 
aspects. One area that comes to mind is the multiple levels of validation.

First, I can only send an invite to an existing e-mail account. I.e., the 
invited account must exist at a point in time in the process. It will be an 
account already known to the invitor.

Next, the invite is sent by _Google_ software! That means that Google has the 
ability to _capture_ a significant group of _valid_ addresses -- even if the 
invite is ignored.

Finally, the recipient makes the positive action of accepting and acting upon 
the invite.

While that series is easily perverted, it's not trivial to do on a mass scale.

When combined with the advertising aspect and the scalability aspect, I suspect 
that it works very well.

Tom Liotta