One of the most frustrating things for early adopters like ourselves to deal with is the private, limited invitation beta. The startups seed a few invitations to their friends, and each new account has 3 or so invitations that can be given away. If you know the founders or one of the very early users, you can get in quickly. But if you don’t, you often have to wait a long time to see a new product.

Startups love this, of course. They’ve created scarcity around a virtual good and that creates buzz. The most successful products can count on invitations being sold on eBay – something we saw with Gmail in 2004 and more recently with Pownce.

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