In the world of Web 2.0, there’s always some hot new service that you have to be invited to join, then you get on a waiting list, then (after a while) you finally get an account. Remember when Gmail was launched, for example? This is a brilliant idea from a marketing standpoint, because it creates a lot of buzz around the service, with everyone who gets an account bragging about it, and everyone who doesn’t, wishing that they did. From a support standpoint, it also makes sense: you can’t just put 10 million people on your service the first day of beta, because it will crash, and you’ll look bad.
The current hot Web 2.0 account to have is Joost, an interactive online TV service brought to you by the two wunderkids who created Skype — I see requests for Joost invitations, which apparently only come from those already on Joost, flying around the Toronto tech community.
The second hottest new Web 2.0 account to have is Lombardi’s Blueprint (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating slightly), and I’m still in that unhappy “waiting list” phase. However, their bot still remembers my name, because it sent me an email this morning to tell me that it expects to complete my account setup soon…