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July 13, 2007 10:40 AM PDT

Inevitable: The invitation exchange

Posted by Rafe Needleman
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The guys at TechCrunch have been thinking the same thing we have been over here: With all these invitation-based Web 2.0 betas flying around, someone could do the world a service by building an exchange for them.

Give and get invitations to closed sites.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Hence, InviteShare, a site that does just that. If you want an invite to a service (such as the current darling of the digerati, Pownce), you can put your name on the list and someone with passes to spare might help you out.

Many sites, once you're invited, also give you invitations you yourself can give out. Thus InviteShare can keep growing.

If a site is gating access via an invitation system, though, InviteShare could unravel the growth plan and potentially bury a fledgling site in more users than it is ready for. However, there is nothing to guarantee that a site that you are invited to will give you invites that you can put back in the system. Many early invitees to Pownce found they couldn't invite friends for a few days, until Pownce released a new batch of invitations into the system.

Ironically, this site was slow and unreliable this morning, buried under new traffic. If only there was a way its founders could limit traffic to the site while they debugged their code...

Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
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Add a Comment (Log in or register) 2 comments
They beat me to it ;)
by jardenberg July 13, 2007 2:58 PM PDT
For a couple of months I've tried to find time to build a great service like this on inviteme.com - but sadly nothing is ready yet. To bad - my intention was to deliver a service that, well, delivers ,)
Anybody with to much time on their hands - contact me.
Reply to this comment
Sounds like a great idea
by yarinh July 14, 2007 1:05 PM PDT
I'd love to help develop such a website or help people start it. You should also check out my new tech business blog:
Boldinvestors.
Its a tech site for everyone, we focus on the business aspects behind technology, check it out at:

http://www.boldinvestors.com/
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