Gmail... Love'em.. Hate'em
The Gmail hype is really incredible.. scarcity and all.. spent a while cracking my head on who to give my precious invites to... and when I'm finally done.. I get 5 more? Duh? A bug or something? 5 more? Now that I'd managed to convince myself why all my other friends don't deserve to be invited.. how am I expected to rebuke my own rationale?
I feel I'm suckered into some Multi-Level-Marketing thingy ;-)
Disclaimer: I'm not complaining about my bestest friend... just poking fun.
Anyways.. looks like i'm not that far off when I start to wonder to myself if this is the way they're going to operate / roll out.. In fact, such viral technique might just be the most effective way of circumventing spammers from auto-subscribing free email accounts and start sending spams. Forget "high-tech" human-verification methods of using images as letters (seen an article about how porn industries are defeating such algorithms, links anyone?)... if your invitee spams, you're out! or something like that... thus.. keeping the email accounts clean. Btw, orkut, a google-affiliated site already grows by such means.
Going a step further, a 'credit alarm' might even be raised should other users start to mark a certain account holder's emails as spam.. peer appraisal thingy..
Anyways.. just waiting for GIM.. (Google Instant Messenger).. and this time, i'm sure won't mind those ads.