Google Wave invites fetch £55 on eBay

 

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By Dave Stevenson

Posted on 5 Oct 2009 at 11:57

Invites to join the Google Wave beta are changing hands for more than £50 on eBay.

Invites for the service - which rolls together email, instant messaging and micro-blogging - were released to 100,000 pre-release testers last Wednesday, each of whom could invite five more people to try out the service.

Invites started turning up on eBay.co.uk almost immediately. On the first day, 34 invites were sold for an average of just under £25 each. The most expensive went for £55; the cheapest for only £9.44 via an American seller.

Positive feedback has been left on many of the auctions, suggesting the transfer of invites is working.

The first wave of feedback is arriving, with controversial blogger Robert Scoble saying Google Wave "brings the worst of email and IM together," and that the new service is a "productivity sink".

PC Pro is trying out the new service and will bring you a full review when we've reached a definitive conclusion.

Google has promised a full public beta before the end of the year, with engineering manager Lars Rasmussen saying the service currently suffers from "being a bit sluggish".