Zmarties

Gmail users over the past few weeks have found they have 50 invites to give away. The various services that sprung up to hand out invites have therefore been flooded with them.

In addition, today I received an invite direct from Google - in a mailing entitled "Gmail Update and Invitation". As well as the invite itself, it outlines the fairly recent changes to the service, including POP access, Gmail notifier, and improved contact handling, and goes on to add

We also wanted to thank you. For showing us your support and for being so patient. And to those who have already signed up for Gmail, thank you for giving it a try and for helping us make it better. Our users are what have made this product great. So whether you're just signing up for your account or you've been with us since the beginning, keep letting us know how we can build you the best email service around.

That's it for now. We hope you like Gmail and will share it with your friends. We've got lots of cool new stuff planned and we can't wait for you to see our work in your Gmail accounts! Stay tuned...


So, after almost a year, they are finally getting around to emailing the people who expressed an interest in the service - I guess that probably means that they are getting pretty close to opening it up to anyone.