First he gave me an early invitation to Gmail long before accounts had 100 invites, let alone being completely open to the public. And now he's hooked me up with an invite to join Pownce. Thanks Kaizar! "What's Pownce?" you ask. Think Socialista on Saturday nights plus Facebook plus YouSendIt plus Twitter plus Evite all in one very clean interface, and the result you get is Pownce.
The New York Times writes:
[It's] a social network service with a velvet rope: Just now, the hottest start-up in Silicon Valley--minutely examined by bloggers, panted after by investors--is Pownce, but only a chosen few can try out its Web site.
Kevin Rose, the co-founder and chief architect of Digg, a hugely popular news site, announced in late June the introduction of Pownce, a social-networking service that combines messaging with file-sharing. Mr. Rose immediately endowed his latest venture with some mystique by declaring that, for the time being, only those with invitations would be permitted to test his new site.
Within days, invitations were selling on eBay for as much as $10.
Like I did with the original Gmail invites and an extra t-shirt I picked up from MTV's free pre-release screening of Napoleon Dynamite that I gave away to the first commenter, I'm giving away one Pownce invite to the first person to leave a comment here (I'll need your e-mail address).