Invite Systems

[Will.Spencer]

I came across the vS-Invites System a few days ago and I was wondering what you guys thought of the concept.

Have you been a member of a a forum that used it or something similar?

Have you used it or something similar on one of your forums?

Here's an abbreviated version of their sales pitch:

Looking to expand your vBulletin community? Invites System is an ultimate expansion for your vBulletin 3.5.x-3.8.x board that features an interface for your members to easily send our registration invitations to their friends.

• Configurable invite expiration period.
• History of issued invites, with color highlights and options to purge pending, expired or rejected invites.
• Daily invite reminders and expiration notifications, can be turned off if desired.
• Ability to define how often reminders can be sent.
• Ability to reject received invitations.
• Ability to permanently opt out of receiving future invitations, with automatic marking of invite as rejected and with an admincp database management interface.
• Automatic prevention of invites from being sent out to already registered e-mails.
• Automatic prevention of invites from being sent out to the same e-mail multiple times.
• If applicable based on user's permissions, an "Issue New Invite" prompt is displayed in usercp for that user.
• When an invitee signs up, invite issuer is automatically set as a referrer for the invitee, and there is no way to go around that.
• When an invitee signs up, invite issuer and the invitee are automatically set up as buddies. Can be turned off from vBulletin Options -> Invites System
• When an invitee signs up, the invitee can be automatically put directly into a special usergroup, if such specified in the issuer's usergroup settings.
• Human verification to prevent multiple submissions.

What do you think? Could something like this really help to grow a forum community?

[GameOver]

I think that it is a more efficient way to invite users (e.g. automatically have username in referer thing when they sign up). However the issue that I see is that it could just be a tool to allow the forum owner to spam a whole lot of people. I think the best way for a community to grow is to provide a quality forum and let users join up at their own free will.