With the July launch of InviteShare, users can sign up for free and trade invites to online beta testing programs. Once one submits their e-mail address to lists kept at the site for particular start-ups, they await for those with spare invites to respond directly to them. Those with invites are encouraged to give priority to users listed higher (those who have shared invites in the past). The site tries to thwart spam by posting the address lists as image files, something more difficult for spamming software to grab for their marketing annoyances. Created by Jeff Broderick, a computer programer and Web designer in Denton, Texas, the site was sold to tech news blog TechCrunch recently for $25,000. As of Monday, InviteShare corralled more than 28,000 users, who collectively sent more than 34,000 invitations for nearly 50 different startups.
Maybe, just maybe, the Neowin forums will now receive less spam topics from users posting their e-mail addresses and asking for invites to beta programs. Yeah, unlikely, but one can dream.