I’ve been using Google’s Gmail program for quite a while and recently went to invite a friend to get a Gmail account. Much to my surprise, the Gmail invitation box has changed! Is it only me, or do you see it too? What do you think it means?
For the longest time I was without any Gmail invitations (I think I had invited 500 people or something and just plumb ran out of invites for six months). Finally there are new invites in my account so I can actually see what you’re talking about, and you’re right! They’ve changed it. Here’s what the Gmail pop-up “invite a friend” window now looks like:
Cool! It’s kept track of my friends and colleagues and is making it very easy for me to bulk invite more than one person to get a Gmail account. In fact, there’s a new box here too “To invite other people, type their names here”.
It could do with a tiny bit of fine-tuning — note that it’s suggesting I invite an entire Yahoo Group [ MyLinkedInPowerForum ] to get a Gmail account, something that probably is not quite what they’d want to see transpire — but for me, it’s a welcome addition to the standard invitation process.
What does it mean that Google’s enhancing the Gmail invitation process? Probably not much, realistically. If anything, perhaps they’re ready for another onslaught of new Gmail users on the system, having bought another few dozen servers, but more likely it’s just one of the many tweaks that the Google team implement every week.
I don’t know if it’s widespread, however, and am curious what happens when you’re back down to only one invitation. If anyone is still seeing an invite box that doesn’t include a checklist of recent email friends (who aren’t already using Gmail), please do let us know!