Diffuse spam?
When Google started its gmail service, its promise of 1000 MB of free storage, neat search function, and innovative grouping of emails by conversations made it pretty attractive. The accounts were only made available to a lucky few, who then were given limited numbers of accounts to share with others. The accounts became a status symbol, of sorts, among “webheads,” and creative methods were used to disperse them.
Recently (like last week), it had become fairly easy to pick up an account, bloggers often posted when they had some invitations to give out (that’s how I got mine, back last year). I personally love gmail. I do not use it as my primary account, but it provides a nice way to manage listserves and other non-vital communications.
As of today, things seemed to have changed. I had 6 invites up earlier this week, and hadn’t thought of doing anything with them. Now I (and others, from what I have seen) have 50 invites available. I cannot imagine sitting there sending out 50 invitations to gmail, and I would feel a bit like an unpaid worker for Google at that point if I did. What started out as an interesting distribution model has now turned into, hey, spam your friends for Google. Anyway, if you want one, let me know.
