Have some invitations that you want to get off your hands? Why not share them with others. Now you can using InviteShare, a new site launched on July 8th that allows users to invite other users to new beta services

Why InviteShare?

If you have ever joined a new beta service through an invitation, then you’ll know that, as a new member of that service, you are given a limited number of invites to share with others. Services that start out by giving away invitations not only generate a ton of buzz, but it allows the service administrators to maintain the growth of the service. The last thing any company would want is to launch a beta service that would be open to the public, only to have it succumb to the amount of use and traffic which often times produces undesired results.

Most of the new services that spring onto the web, give users a ton of invitations to spread out amongst their friends or colleagues. The fact of the matter is, most users end up with invitations they can’t seem to give away. Using InviteShare, users can easily give their extra invitations away while also becoming a prominent figure on the InviteShare network.

Getting Started:

Creating an account on InviteShare was fairly simple. All they needed from me was a valid email address and a preferred username. Upon logging into my account, I am greeted with my profile page which lists any pending invites I may have, invitations that were sent from my account, the latest news in the upper right hand corner and links to edit my profile, check messages, my invites and a link to logout.

How It Works:

The meat of InviteShare is located on the browse page. This page lists a number of different sites and services that are currently in an invite-only stage. For this review, I chose GrandCentral. At the time of this writing, this is what the invitation list looked like for GrandCentral. To request an invitation to GrandCentral, you would click on the ADD YOURSELF TO THE LIST link. This will take the email address you used to sign up to InviteShare and place it onto the invitation request list.

If any other InviteShare members have an invitation to GrandCentral, they would check the list of email addresses on the request list. The email addresses on the request list are the ones that will be used to send the invitation. Since I have 10 GrandCentral invitations and there are five people on the list, I will be able to send five invitations to those requesting an invite. Once the invitation has been sent, InviteShare users are suppose to click on the email address on the request page and click on the INVITATION SENT button. This sends a confirmation to that email address. Once that user confirms that account, the invitation sender will also receive a confirmation. After you click the INVITATION SENT button, that email address is then cleared from the request listing.

Final Thoughts:

Those of you with a ton of extra invitations will really get a kick out of this service. Not only does it provide you with a way to actually give away those invitations, but it also bumps up your notoriety within the InviteShare network. The more invitations you send, the higher the priority you will receive when requesting an invitation to a brand new service. It seems to me, to be a win-win situation.

During this review, I encountered about twenty different 500-INTERNAL SERVER ERRORS. The errors are most likely due to the popularity the service is receiving. After all, they did make the front page of TechCrunch, WebWare and Read/WriteWeb.

One of the most annoying aspects of this service is the inability to highlight and then copy an email address listed on the request list. Because you have to click on the email address to confirm the invitation, there doesn’t seem to be a way to highlight the text to perform a copy-paste operation, leading to more than necessary typing.

It has to be stated that, these sites and services are in an invite only period for a reason. One thing I have already noticed is that, it takes one invitation to get into a service, that service in turn grants you anywhere between 3-10 invites. If InviteShare takes off like I believe it will, new sites and services may have to change the way they do their invite program.

If you ever see someone requesting an invite or asking where they can get one, be sure to point them to http://www.inviteshare.com as this is the place that will most likely produce results.

Unrelated:

On an unrelated note, I want to get this off of my chest. Back in late June, I began a brainstorming session. In this brainstorming session, I ended up with the idea of creating a service exactly like InviteShare except that I was going to call it INVITR. INVITR is already taken and as I was in the process of slowly getting things together, I read an RSS feed that this service was launched, literally taking the breath out of me. To add insult to injury, the guys name making all of the news postings on InviteShare is Jeff, the same name as mine! Oh well I suppose. This is what happens when you have a good idea but no way to back it. I guess I can say that great minds think alike, wouldn’t you say Jeff?