How Invites Became Spam
Recently I have been spoiled with invites for so called “private Betas“, so much even that I had to add some of these web companies to my spam list. I simply don’t even want to try out these web apps anymore, because they simply annoyed me too much.
What is the problem? It is that these web2.0 tools have every new user select everyone from their Gmail/Hotmail/YahooMail contact list and send them a mass invite. Not only is this not personal, it can also lead to more than 10 invites for one person. I already received 11 invites for Doostang, an app that I am not going to try, although it might be very useful. (I actually received more that 1 invite from 1 person! Thank you Chakib!)
I seriously like some of the new web apps, but in the beginning of the “invite”-hype it was an honour to get an invite simply because they were scarce. These days, an invite is as common as the air we breath (although I don’t consider air spam!) and I simply consider them spam because they annoy me and I can’t seem to unsubscribe from them. Invites these days are overrated, impersonal, and highly annoying.
So how can web apps change this phenomenon? A couple of things come to mind. First of all I would like to see a “refuse all future invites”-button that I can click to stop (so-called) friends from sending me invites. If I can’t do that, than an unwanted invite means as much to me as unsolicited mail - a.k.a. spam.
Secondly, I think that any product should be able to engage people to make contacts on their own. If people need to make contacts to further enjoy their product, then it will automatically motivate them to invite their friends. And if I get a personal invite from a friend via Twitter, MSN, or email, then creates so much more impact than some automated message. Obviously the problem that arises here is that if your product actually sucks, it makes sense to have people invite their friends automatically as soon as you can!
In the end I realized that any web app that has to use some kind of automated and impersonal invite scheme to got their users to invite their friends is probably a rubbish product to start with. So remember, if anyone send me loads of invites for the same product, I will automatically thank you for the “regard this product as useless”-notification you just virtually generated.
Caleb Elston http://www.spendapp.com
September 5th, 2007Can you think of any time when you would like a message from a webapp giving you an invite code to the private beta? I can see that some apps do actually benefit from a private beta to ensure that the app is stable and can handle the growth.
If the app checked to see if an invite had already been sent to your email and each user could only invite a small number of people, would that change your mind?
Cristiano Betta http://cristianobetta.com/
September 5th, 2007I think you are missing the point that a private beta, or any beta, is intended to be a product for a test period. Invites therefore are a mean to create a steady but controllable growth. Inviting ALL ones contacts directly as you sign up is not about steady growth, but about creating the illusion of access being scarce.
Caleb Elston http://www.spendapp.com
September 5th, 2007I had assumed that was the case. I would not expect that you would have unlimited invites. I agree that inviting all of your contacts at once is spam. Because every message needs to have context.
Cristiano Betta http://cristianobetta.com/
September 5th, 2007Well, the point is that I am getting more and more of those kind of invites. Not the ones where someone has 5 invites, NO, the one where they automatically spam every user in your address book. Another good example is Facebook, who does the same thing.
Reinier http://zwitserloot.com
September 5th, 2007Cris nailed it: People basically get upset if you take them for fools, and doing a ‘private beta’ clearly just to benefit from the ‘privilege’ feeling is ridiculous.
However, there is a way to make the privilege thing actually work: Just don’t invite the whole address book. Which is tantamount to spamming and won’t make you any friends anyway. Google probably (re)invented this technique with the gmail invite system. That wasn’t broken, so why change it?
Invite a few friends and give everyone the option to invite 1 friend a month. Plenty of privilege there.
Cristiano Betta http://cristianobetta.com/
September 5th, 2007Exactly my point. I wouldn’t mind an invite that is actually exclusive.
Caleb Elston http://www.spendapp.com
September 5th, 2007I agree 100%. It has to be limited to be a real ‘Private Beta’. Thanks for sparking the conversation on this. I hope people realize that blasting a users address book is spam.