Updated March 5/2005: Please be advised that the GmailSwap.com domain has been purchased, and
the New Gmailswap.com is coming in a few days!!!!!!
The latest news, tips, hacks on gmail, google, and more.
Hi.
Gmail Swap is closed. For almost nine months, Gmail Swap provided a place for nice people to help nice people. Tens of thousands of swaps were posted - countless people got the gmail accounts they craved, and countless more were able to do a good deed, get some neat stuff, or simply make a new friend. Your flair and generosity caught the world's attention - countless newspapers wrote stories, from India to Italy to New York City.
The time has come, however, to turn off the lamps and bar the gates. Due partly to the impact of this site, Google is tossing out invitations as if they were candy - if you're looking for one, chances are that one of your friends, or someone at another online community, can help you out. Furthermore, over recent months, Gmail Swap's become a messy, garbled version of what it once was. I went travelling in September 2004, and moderation of the site waned considerably. By the time I was gallavanting across Finland and
Croatia, bits of the site had broken, the tigers were roaming free, and most of the community's old gleam had been lost.
So rather than let things slide further, here we are. I would like to thank all of the site's many users, especially the ones who got caught up in the spirit of the site and made it the success it was; Gmail Swap's volunteer mods, who spent countless hours trying to stem the tide; Andre Torrez, for inspiring me to do this in the first place; dogmatic, for making the magic; Revolution Hosting, for making it technically feasible; and Google, for letting it happen. And I apologize to anyone who was frustrated by my absence over these past four months.
With Gmail Swap laid to rest, I will be moving on to the greener fields of Edinburgh, Scotland, where I will be looking for work. I will also continue my work on the musicblog Said the Gramophone.
Please rest assured, all of your user data and email addresses will be obliterated, removed from under spammers' prying eyes.
If anyone would like to get in touch, you can email me at sean dot michaels at gmail dot com.
(Please do not contact me to request a gmail invitation, or to ask for your website to be linked here.
All the very best,
sean
january 15, 2005