I’ve noticed a trend with a lot of websites in general during the last few years. They’ve been going the route of being accessible by invitation only. It seems to spur more curiousity in a site than if they just let anybody register. People want to be “in” on something, so they try desperately to get themselves an invite just to see what the buzz is all about.
The latest example is with grandcentral.com, which I blogged about previously last month. Before they were bought by Google, it seemed like nobody really even heard of or cared much about the site. The minute they get snatched up, Google adds a feature that makes it an invite only site, and suddenly more people want a Grand Central account than when they were in their pre-Google and open to everybody days.
It really does seem like a great marketing strategy to generate interest in a mostly unknown site. Maybe I should start up some sort of invite only, exclusive limited access, or whatever you want to call it website and see how it fares.