What’s the etiquette of handing out invitations to Gmail, Google’s (so far) free e-mail service?
Do you hand them out willy-nilly, unafraid of offending someone’s coolness by suggesting they’re not hip enough to already have one, or have been offered one, themselves?
Do you tentatively send them an e-mail first, checking whether they’re already hooked up?
Do you hold back, offering them only to people who ask, like my friend Colin who keeps forgetting to register his so the invitation expires?
Do you donate them to charity?
Do you forget the whole thing, assuming (probably quite rightly) that everyone who wants one has one, and they’ve become so debased as cool currency these days that the invitations are little better than spam, or those awful Plaxo/Zero Degrees-style automated invitation-things?
Do you invite yourself dozens of times with lots of slightly different email addresses for use when signing up to spammable websites, services, mailing lists or porn?
Do you sign up yourself with cool single words, like rockhardpecs@gmail.com in the hope someone else will buy the accounts one day?
1. There’s no etiquette, methinks.
2. I just BCC a whole bunch of people with a generic-sounding message (sounds like spam). “afraid to offend coolness”? Hardly. Who really worries about that sort of thing?
3. Nope.
4. After (2), I do hold back, for the exact same reason you’ve said.
5. Charity? Did that once.
6. After (4), I’m not bothered anymore.
7. I’ve got three: one for my blog, one for friends/family, and one as a spam lightning rod.
8. Good idea!
No you try make money off of it… or barring that you use it to boost your auction rating: http://tinyurl.com/aax57
Personally I can’t be bothered.
I thought everyone had one by now?
I just offloaded the lot on the Gmail invite spooler:
http://isnoop.net/gmail/
and point people there.