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What to Do with Your Extra Gmail Invites

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m now a happy user of Google’s Gmail service. I find it makes my bulk e-mail much easier to manage, and thus frees up my regular e-mail in-box for one-to-one correspondence. (I currently only use Gmail for bulk e-mail subscriptions or alerts, but you can use it for all your e-mail if you want.)

Gmail is still an invitation-only service. Lately, Google has been very generous with the number of invitations it allots to Gmail users to redistribute. Right now, everyone I know who wants Gmail has gotten an invitation from me – yet I still have plenty leftover, and I keep getting more. What to do with those extra invitations?…

(NOTE OCT. 12: Several people have written to me asking for Gmail invites. Sorry, I don’t have any, and I’m not maintaining a waiting list.)

iSnoop.net has created a neat little Gmail invite spooler, which collects unused Gmail invitations and makes them available to anyone who wants Gmail. It’s first-come, first-served, you need to keep checking that site until they have some invitations available and grab one. But it works.

Now, every time I have extra Gmail invitations I send them to this address: gmail@isnoop.net. In the “name” fields of the “invite a friend to Gmail” window I enter “A. Donation.” Then, instead of the standard Gmail message that goes with the invitation, I leverage a miniscule amount of publicity for my blog by including this note: “Courtesy of Amy Gahran, author of CONTENTIOUS (http://blog.contentious.com).” (Thanks to Boing Boing for this link.)

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3 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. As far as I can tell, the spooler is indeed still working. If anyone has details on this, please provide a link with more information.

    - Amy Gahran

    [Reply]

    1. Amy Gahran on October 10th, 2004 at 11:01 pm
  2. Wow, that’s great! I have been wondering what to do with those extra invites now that I too have given them to everyone who has expressed any interest in them

    [Reply]

    2. LadyLitBlitzin on October 1st, 2004 at 6:36 pm
  3. Excellent idea, Amy - a good neighborly thing to do, and a good mini-promotional tool, too!

    [Reply]

    3. Jonathan Cohen on October 1st, 2004 at 10:27 am