I thought I’d have a look at the awaited beta release of Y! Mash (originally called “Yahoo! Mosh”) and was stopped dead in my tracks by the dreaded message, “Mash is an invitation-only beta service”. So instead, I think I’ll talk about a great little site called, inviteShare.com where you can get an invitation into almost 50 gated sites that require a login or are currently under an invitation-only mode.
Getting started:
The index page of InviteShare (prior to login) is focused on their top users, news, the number of invites, and number of sites you could be invited to. This is fine to show an audience that has already logged in at least once before. Instead, this site makes the potentially fatal assumption that new users already know the purpose and benefit of the site. An absolute newbie, even someone who “gets it” would have to fearlessly click on “Signup now” to eventually see the “Not a member?” message. This is one layer too late.
If they make it there, users will find the sign-up screen to be very easy to use. Four simple fields, a click on the “save” button and you’ll be on your way. Nice.
You’re in:
Once logged in, the first step I took was to search for “Mash”. It came up and I selected the button that said, “add your self to the list” for Yahoo Mash. I wasn’t really sure what was supposed to happen next, so right here would have been a great place for some type of message to say that someone might invite me soon. However, within 2 minutes an email arrived telling me that a user named “dookie” had invited me into Yahoo Mash.
The result:
I clicked the invitation in the email and whammo. I was past the gate, and my Yahoo Mash profile was already set up and ready for me to start Mashing. The bottom line for InviteShare is that they would greatly improve their conversion rate by giving additional home page screen space to embrace new members, and more guidance for first time users. Showing the leader board, etc. is great to show returning members.
Stay tuned… I’ll review the UI for Yahoo! Mash in a future post.