Why? If the product is that good I’ll evangelize it. This is a desktop application, so I don’t see a big boost from a network effect. All this does makes me wonder if the product is more about building hype than value
In a world where publishing is essentially free, reputation is an extremely valuable commodity. The ask here is not trivial.
I tell my friends about new apps, startups, and projects all the time. None of them think I'm staking my reputation when I shitpost about some new thing in Slack.
Apart from that, the e-mail form doesn't let me control what I'm sending.
You're taking a needlessly confrontational stance here with insulting language, and people are responding to that.
How can we ever expect a reliable, non-garbage-dominate internet when it is funded by perverse incentives?
But if a friend of mine recommends a product to me, well, I do think all of those things.
My reputation is worth more to me, than trying to get higher up in a queue to a product i haven't tried. I don't share things with people lightly, and there are clearly a bunch of us out there.
Any certainly, nobody is advocating that our view of the world is the correct one, just that we hold that view.
Imagine what the world would be like if everyone had the same attitude towards other people's attention and time as you do.
I'm sure this behaviour doesn't seem like a big deal to you because relatively few people are so inconsiderate.
Then why are you posting anonymously?
reputation is an extremely valuable commodity
This may not matter much if the thing you're recommending is an email client. But it matters a lot if the thing you're recommending is, say, an investment in a startup company. It also matters a lot if you're, say, Amazon or Yelp or TripAdvisor and a big part of your stock in trade is an enormous volume of product recommendations.
Or maybe only send to your friends who a new email client would interest?
Is “hey, saw this on HN, this looks interesting” really going to hurt your reputation?
He’s a dev trying to market, that’s all.
It's totally optional to invite more people, so if it goes against your ethical views, just don't.
Incredibly hyperbolic
It's actually dangerous and unethical TO put my name behind this untested product. It's not open source, and I'm being asked to put my seal of trust and approval on their project. That's a hard no.
Where are the boring products without dumb marketing techniques to generate hype, with actual things to show other than a waiting list?
Frame it as a reward not a punishment.
Re: Incentive to share it - Just build a good to amazing product - which the comments and upvotes you have on HN are already significant proof of - and you'll get higher adoption in the long run with exponential growth, without adding friction of little tricks like this which will be relatively inconsequential in the long run, other than perhaps causing friction with early adopters who will get turned off by them.
Maybe a quick survey with questions like, - what email client do you use now? - what is your favorite/least favorite feature of said client? - how often do you check your email? etc
Although Mailbox could presumably fit into that strategy, Dropbox is instead focusing on its new Google Docs-style document editing and collaboration service Paper, which may gain some of the functionality of Mailbox. "As we deepened our focus on collaboration, we realized there’s only so much an email app can do to fundamentally fix email," a blog post credited to "the Mailbox team" reads. "We’ve come to believe that the best way for us to improve people’s productivity going forward is to streamline the workflows that generate so much email in the first place."
So what you're saying is that Viktor Hn just shot to the front of the line? Well played, Viktor.
Edit: Actually, based on the invite code, it's likely a specific code for HN. The Developer's name appears to be Viktor Jansson, I just assumed Hn was a last name. :)