Invitation system

Last updated July 22, 2021

An invitation system is a method of encouraging people to join an organization, such as a club or a website. In regular society, it refers to any system whereby new members are chosen; they cannot simply apply. In relation to websites and other technology-related organisations, the term refers to a more specific situation whereby invitations are sent, but there is never any approval needed from other members. Popular alternatives to this specific version are open registration and closed registration. Open registration is where any user can freely join. Closed registration involves an existing member recommending a new member and approval is sought amongst existing members. The basis of the invitation system is that a member can grant approval to a new user without having to consult any other members.

Applications

Invitation systems for websites are usually temporary. They are typically used for services in private beta testing, in order to control the number of users on the service. In other cases, they can be used due to limited availability of server resources. There are a growing number of sites which use invitation systems on a permanent basis to create exclusivity and to control quality of user-generated content.^[1] Rarely, they may be used on a permanent basis in order to aggregate social network statistics (all users will ultimately have a traceable connection to all others). They are sometimes used to avoid abusive types or spammers, by relying on mutual trust between all members.

Variations

Sometimes, a tiered invitation system may be in place, wherein those higher up the hierarchy will have the power to grant more invitations, whereas low-ranking members may receive few or even no invitation rights.

Examples

Some prominent services which were once invitation-based include blog-host LiveJournal, social network Yahoo 360°, and podcast publisher Odeo. When Google releases new services, an invitation requirement has often been imposed for the first few months of the service's existence, including e-mail provider Gmail,^[2] social networking service Orkut and real-time collaboration site Google Wave.

Many BitTorrent trackers, known as "private trackers", use an invitation system in order to maintain torrent quality, speeds, and safety. Demonoid and ImmortalSeed are examples of invitation-only trackers. Despite its invitation-only status, Oink's Pink Palace was accessed by government authorities and forced to close in October 2007.

Several actors in the Video game industry are also using this approach.

Related Research Articles

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BitTorrent is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner.

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Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale computer sharing.

A BitTorrent tracker is a special type of server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol.

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A home server is a computing server located in a private residence providing services to other devices inside or outside the household through a home network or the Internet. Such services may include file and printer serving, media center serving, home automation control, web serving, web caching, file sharing and synchronization, video surveillance and digital video recorder, calendar and contact sharing and synchronization, account authentication, and backup services.

This is a glossary of jargon related to peer-to-peer file sharing via the BitTorrent protocol.

Outlook.com is a personal information manager web app from Microsoft consisting of webmail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith as Hotmail, it was acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for an estimated $400 million and relaunched as MSN Hotmail, later rebranded to Windows Live Hotmail as part of the Windows Live suite of products. Microsoft phased out Hotmail in October 2011, relaunching the service as Outlook.com in 2012.

Google Friend Connect was a free social networking site from 2008 to 2012. Similar in practice to Facebook Platform and MySpaceID, it took a decentralised approach, allowing users to build a profile to share and update information via third-party sites. These sites acted as a host for profile sharing and social exchanges.

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Social login is a form of single sign-on using existing information from a social networking service such as Facebook, Twitter or Google, to sign into a third party website instead of creating a new login account specifically for that website. It is designed to simplify logins for end users as well as provide more and more reliable demographic information to web developers.

Twister is free software for experimental peer-to-peer microblogging. Being completely decentralized means that no one is able to shut it down, as there is no single point to attack. The system uses end-to-end encryption to safeguard communications. It is based on both BitTorrent and Bitcoin-like protocols and is considered a (distributed) Twitter clone.

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Spy pixels or tracker pixels are hyperlinks to remote image files in HTML email messages that have the effect of spying on the person reading the email if the image is downloaded. They are commonly embedded in the HTML of an email as small, imperceptible, transparent graphic files. Spy pixels are commonly used in marketing, and there are several countermeasures in place that aim to block email tracking pixels. However, there are few regulations in place that effectively guard against email tracking approaches.

References

↑ SpeakUp - "Ffffantastic Bookmarking." Published 17 October 2007. Retrieved 20 October 2009.
↑ Kirk, Jeremy. "Gmail finally opens to all". macworld.com. IDG Consumer & SMB. Retrieved 16 February 2014.

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[1] SpeakUp - "Ffffantastic Bookmarking." Published 17 October 2007. Retrieved 20 October 2009.

[2] Kirk, Jeremy. "Gmail finally opens to all". macworld.com. IDG Consumer & SMB. Retrieved 16 February 2014.

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