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Comment by natpalmer1776 | Hacker News Reader

Remember when OpenAI wasn’t allowing new subscriptions to their ChatGPT pro plans because they were oversubscribed? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

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Wouldn't that be good? I remember back in the day you could only get Gmail thru an invite, it was an awesome strategy. "Currently closed for applications" creates FOMO. They'd just need to actually get the GPUs in relatively short supply. They could do it in bursts though, right? "Now accepting applications for a short time."

I'm not an internet marketer but that sounds like a win win to me. People feel special, they get extra hype, and the service isn't broken.

In the case of Gmail that was fake scarcity.

In the case of Anthropic is fake availability.

Sam Altman explained the idea is to scale the thing up, and see what happens.

He hadn't claimed to offer a solution to the supply problem that would unfold.

Are you sure it was fake scarcity for Gmail? IIRC they did it because they were worried about systems falling over if it grew too fast, and discovered the marketing benefits as a side effect.

Are you mixing up Anthropic and OpenAI here?

I didn't. Anthropic and others followed the concept of scaling up models and worry about efficiency and availability later. Sam likely didn't invent the idea but he talked about it.

Yes, "Pepperidge farm remembers" is usually about how something used to be good.

Yeah, but there was a spoof on that (in Family Guy?). It was a tie in to the movie "I Know what you Did last Summer", IIRC.

Google Wave demonstrated that this doesn't always work.

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