Last week, when Google started to send out 100.000 invites for the new service Google Wave, a lot of high profile bloggers, technology journalists or techies were disappointed they did not got one. Robert Scoble got one, probably the Wall Street Journal got one to make a few friends with the old economy newspapers, but you… you did not.
And what do you do if you want one to be cool and an early adopter, or even an innovator? Right, you try to get one through other means. And luckily we live in a society based on open, efficient market principles, where everybody wants to get a break. So selling your invite to Google Wave, even if it’s against the user terms and conditions, is a real option.
And what better platform is there to sell your Google Wave invite, together maybe with some useless Google Swag, on eBay, the worlds global marketplace where you can sell practically anything.
So a lot of Google Wave invites were put up for sale last week on eBay. According to policy, the holders of these invites were not allowed to sell the invite, both through the Google T’s & C’s, as for the eBay policies. From the Wall Street Journal piece:
…Mr. Blount said he received an automated message from eBay, saying that he was violating the site’s terms of service by trying to sell an item without owning the copyright….
Years ago, I too sold a couple of Gmail invites when the now popular email program from Google was still invite only. It was such a good play, selling something you got for free, unlimited invites in your early Gmail account, no shipping costs. Selling these invites for only $4 made them sell like crazy.
The keyword Google Wave was the keyword with the largest change on eBay. From 70 the week before, to 23,125 searches last week, it was clear Google Wave was of interest especially for journalists. Through linking to the search url, everybody clicking within a story or a blogpost contributed to the large number of searches for Google Wave.
In the main search box, two related searches are being displayed as well. Seems the other two, Google Wave invite and Google Wave invitation are also popular.
Still there are a large number of Google Wave invites for sale on eBay, but the price has come down significant.
Most memorable tweet I saw flying bye the last couple of days was playing into the fact that you can only extract value out of Google Wave if your network also has an account. With just 100.000 invites sent out it will be hard to find your friends on Google Wave.
RT @onehappyguy: Google Wave first impression… feels like I own a fax machine but nobody else does… I can’t fax anyone else.
I keep listening to the news bulletin talk about getting this topic. I have been looking around for the best site.