http://www.tech-recipes.com/google_tips481.html

The author of the above article discusses the method and success of the marketing scheme Google used for its beta version of GMail, its new email service. Even before the beta version was released in April 2004, news and rumors about a 1-gigabyte mailbox, Google searching emails, and other features were being discussed in online blogs. Once the beta version was released, users could only be invited to use GMail. Therefore, to increase the hype on Internet blogs about the email service, the first invites were sent to Google’s own online bloggers. Then, each new account was given a number of invites to invite their friends to GMail. The number of invites was initially kept low to control growth and keep others eager and excited to get a GMail account. Soon enough, GMail accounts were so coveted that some were even sold for as much as $500 on eBay. This was the essence of GMail’s marketing scheme, to use exclusivity to build hype around their service.

The key to the success in marketing GMail lies in the use of invites to create what Malcolm Gladwell calls a “social epidemic” in The Tipping Point. The idea was to create so much interest and hype around GMail, that this would allow it to market itself. By inviting online bloggers on Google’s blog, GMail took advantage that these bloggers were what Gladwell calls connectors and mavens. These bloggers were considered mavens because they were knowledgeable about GMail and other email users would take their opinions seriously. Furthermore, they were connectors because they were likely, as bloggers, to connect to a large social network of other bloggers and blog readers. These bloggers would then invite friends and fellow bloggers, and soon accounts would trickle down to regular email users. In this sense, the “social epidemic” for the desire to obtain a GMail account began.

Despite some similarity to Gladwell’s “social epidemic” concept, one might think that the chaotic changes he describes in such epidemics were possibly hindered by the limitation of invites. If GMail’s goal was to increase their number of accounts as quickly as possible, shouldn’t they have allowed an unlimited amount of invites? Possibly, but it is possible that such a strategy would cause the increase in accounts to eventually to die down because only those who new about GMail desired one. In effect, GMail would have saturated a large social network. Therefore, by limiting invites, GMail was able to escalate the hype to reach out to other social networks.

Some also argue that GMail also wanted to control the growth of their service to prevent an overload on their servers. Either way, this method was able to accomplish both goals: keep up with the growth and to have hype auto-market GMail.