and from what i remember, staying true to typical google fashion, they fucked it up by not opening up the “beta” when they had a critical mass forming behind it. then only to force everyone into having a profile a year or whatever later. lol, too late. i think most of us understood that anything associated with google is assumed to be a never-ending “beta”, so no idea what they were thinking or waiting for.
That’s easy to say now, but Orkut (another Google social network, mostly used in Brazil) also had a beta invite system… And that helped it grow tremendously. The secrecy and “status” of getting invited made people go wild - they would even sell invites.
The strategy can work. It’s just very timing sensitive.
and from what i remember, staying true to typical google fashion, they fucked it up by not opening up the “beta” when they had a critical mass forming behind it. then only to force everyone into having a profile a year or whatever later. lol, too late. i think most of us understood that anything associated with google is assumed to be a never-ending “beta”, so no idea what they were thinking or waiting for.
I think it was definitely the super long beta period where you needed an invite killed it. I knew a ton of people who were interested that gave up
That’s easy to say now, but Orkut (another Google social network, mostly used in Brazil) also had a beta invite system… And that helped it grow tremendously. The secrecy and “status” of getting invited made people go wild - they would even sell invites.
The strategy can work. It’s just very timing sensitive.
I’m not sure if I’m mis-remembering, but I believe my first Gmail account was by invitation. It was pretty much just an email account back then
Correct, I got my account invite from The Screensavers show with Kevin Rose. They were giving them out randomly to viewers.
Orkut was young when Facebook access was still restricted to college kids only. Google+ was dumb. You’d get and then it was just tumble weeds.
Reminds me of Bluesky which is also in a permanent beta.