“We have GMail Invites!” Okay, actually we don’t, but this phenomenon has been spreading through the web the past couple of weeks, and it has really helped to build a buzz for GMail that traditional advertising could never have achieved. What makes this even more special is that the cost to Google was zero.
Already they had created a wonderful service that easily would have grown through word-of-mouth advertising, but instead they only allowed a certain number of individuals in at a time. Surprisingly, they probably did this more for testing and load balancing reasons than for advertising, but it seemed to help enormously on both fronts.
On the web almost everything is free including web-based email services, so when the most popular technology company today offers an email service that gives you 1 Gigabyte of storage for free you are going to be interested. Along with the storage aspect, the rave reviews that the service has received — even while still in beta mode — only helped to increase the service’s popularity. Add the fact that the only way to get one was through an invite and you probably have yourself the best marketing scheme of the first half of 2004.
However, as companies must notice though, it wasn’t the invite only scheme that worked for GMail, it was the product itself. Without an excellent product that would generate buzz the invitations would have been useless and probably placed just above spam in annoyance level. In any case, whether they meant to do it or not, Google has hit a homerun with both their product and marketing that has caused all the other major players (Yahoo, Hotmail…) to take notice.
About Mike Rundle
1GB free email! Sounds good. But what about privacy? Do you know that Google are going to scan you emails to show their “text ads”. And, also, who is going to use 1GB for email? (not me).
And one more thing, if Google launch their 1GB free email a lot of people will be encouraged to upload illegal software, games, and mp3s (like at the yahoo groups). I guess there are solutions and Google already have ansewers to these questions, but overall and I’m not that excited about that than some other people are(I saw on ebay some people pay $20-$50 for invitation).
The code used to display ads is based on the code that they use with their AdSense system. The code absorbs the text contained within the document then picks out some of the most commonly used words to display ads based on that.
You can visit a site about web design, and still see an ad for soemthing that is not design related, if a certain word is used enough. The emails are not actually scanned (and if they are, it is not because of this).
And as far as 1GB, sure, I check my email enough to where I will never even see half of that. But compared to other free email services, most of which are still offering 10 MB, and the big boys have uped the anty to 100 MB. I can still have a full mailbox within 3 days of not checking my emial.
I think GMail is great, and I have only been using it for about a week now. It is setup differently than you may be used to, but it is great. I espeically love the interface which uses a lot less code than Hotmal, Yahoo, and all the others. You don’t have to wait 10 seconds for the page to reload when refreshing your inbox, it is instentaneous.
But what about privacy? Do you know that Google are going to scan you emails to show their “text ads”
Believe me, if you are actually concerned about your privacy online, a Google bot is the least of your worries. Considering that e-mails pass through so many nodes and servers that each e-mail message is practically a bullitin board, if you really want privacy, don’t use e-mail at all.
I expect that because it is a free service I will see embedded/banner ads, but if a bot searches for common words to direct the ads, I’m not concerned.
As long as you dont use it for any work related stuff, then gmail is definitely better than any other email.
If you think, Hotmail or Yahoo cannot scan your email content, then it is absolutely wrong.
Any free email providers, will have the full access to all of your emails and it may also be stated to you on their privacy statement.Dont we click on ‘I Accept’ most of the times, without even reading their policies ?.
Sure I probably will not use a gigabyte either, but just the other day I recieved a notice from Hotmail telling me that my one account was getting full. I don’t want to have to go through the hassle of archiving all of these to somewhere else, I just want to be able to keep everything there. As said above, if Hotmail or Yahoo! mail really wanted to read your email, they could. Only thing is, it’d probably violate privacy policy. If GMail wanted to read your email, they could too, but then again, it would violate their privacy policy just like Yahoo! and Hotmail would. I don’t get all of this hype people have about a computer that scans for key words in your email, and displays ads to you based on them. If you’re that type of person, then dont use Google search either, because it does the exact same thing by matching ads to your search query. If no humans are reading it, then there is absolutely nothing to worry about. It’s Not like the computer is going to snitch on you.