Twine beta invite

October 19, 2007 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Web 2.0, Beta, Social Networking

InviteShare, my new go-to source for beta invites doesn’t have a line on anything for Twine. If anyone out there has an invite to the beta they’d be willing to share, I’d love to be able to check it out.

What’s is it? Twine, the product of Radar Networks, is one of the more promising semantic search engine efforts to date. Yes, the phrase “Google killer” is being used. Venture Beat did a great write-up on Twine yesterday if you want to learn more about it. The post on VentureBeat does a great job explaining not only Twine, but the concept of semantic search. There is also a more concise post about Twine on TechCrunch.

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How I got a Yahoo Mash invite in 5 minutes

September 17, 2007 at 11:01 pm · Filed under Web Applications, Usability, Web 2.0, Alpha, Social Networking, Beta, User Experience

I like participating in betas for web sites and web-based applications. Trouble is, I’m just a regular guy. And, historically hunting for invites has yielded a relatively poor return on my time investment. Thankfully, a new site has made it easier for us regular guys to participate. It’s aptly called InviteShare. Here’s how it works:

How Beta Invites are Distributed
When a startup with a killer moves into a limited beta phase, they delve out a small number of invitations to friends or people who have requested participation online. Each of the people receiving the invitation are granted the ability to invite a few more people. And so on… And so on…

Enter InviteShare
InviteShare’s has formalized (and in essence taken control of) the whole process by creating an exchange for beta invitations. Since the distribution of invites usually proliferates exponentially, if a user who receives an invite simply returns the favor to other InviteShare members, the ball keeps rolling.

My first experience with InviteShare was great. After creating my account I logged in, and, after a bit of fumbling around with the site I arrived at the Streamy.com invite page and gave my last Streamy invite to the next person waiting in the queue. Then, I searched on Mash and requested an invite. Less than 5 minutes later I had an invite in my Inbox from another InviteShare member named Ian. Genius.

Any negatives? One glaring one: This ain’t no 37signals app. InviteShare’s user experience needs an intervention. Applying some sound usability principles would go a long way for InviteShare.

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