Column: Please, can we stop hunger marketing?

Note to readers: Hello world is a program developers run to check if a newly installed programming language is working alright. Startups and tech companies are continuously launching new software to run the real world. This column will attempt to be the "Hello World" for the real world.

Way back in 2010, a new product called Quora was launched. Some of the biggest names in startup land wrote profound answers to profound questions on Quora. Just about every big name from Silicon Valley was on it. But there was a problem. You had to get an invite to be able to use the product.

A couple of years later, another company called Medium was launched. Beautiful design. Big names. Problem again: you had to get an invite to be able to use the product. When average joes like me try to sign up,we get shunted to the rear end of a long waiting list.

It all began way back in 2004 with the launch of Gmail. The web-based email service from Google launched as an invite-only service. The product was brilliant. Making the service invite-only turned out to be a masterstroke in marketing. The more people couldn’t have it, the more people wanted it. It got to a point where people traded Gmail invites on eBay. For an average joe like me, it wasn’t accessible for years.

Pinterest, Ello, and even Facebook were once exclusive invite-only products. Phone companies like Xiaomi, shoemakers like Adidas, luxury, and fashion brands have all been playing hard to get for some time now. This hunger marketing has become a credible launch strategy.

Much to my relief, the trend had almost disappeared from the internet for a few years and no one really bothered with it anymore. But these past few weeks and months, it looks like the good old days of ‘invite-only’ products are back to sucker eager and average joes like me.

Want better email? Get on the waitlist. Share it on your social media. While you’re at it, take this 30-question survey. And don’t forget to write that love letter to us. Hey, and it doesn’t work on Android. iOS only. Once you’ve done all this, maybe, just maybe, we’ll give you the privilege of being our customer.

I’ve queued up. I’ve taken the surveys and I’ve told my followers on Twitter that this shiny new product is something they can’t live without. I went through the pain and process. But why? Was it for the fear of missing out? Signaling that I’m ahead of the tech curve?

Looking back, I wonder if it was really worth the angst? Hey, do I have so many f**** to give? What would have happened if I’d waited a few months to get access to Quora? What would have happened if I’d waited a few months to get access to Gmail or the new email service that’s trying to make better email? Nothing.

If you take a minute to think, you’d know how pointless it was. The same old products that played hard to get, now solicit desperately. Content from Quora shows up on every search page even though you try to avoid it. Google is only too eager to give you a free email account so it can show better ads to you. The same goes for almost every other product. Fundamentally, these products need to get to some scale to become viable.

As the creators of these products aspire to take them mainstream, they eventually let everyone in — sometimes in weeks, sometimes in months. These days they even let inhuman bots and bigots in. So here's my advice: queue up if you must. But you’ll live even if you don’t. To misquote Gandhi, first, they ignore you. Then they come begging to you.