TechCrunch buys InviteShare for $25,000

Just days after its launch, InviteShare has been sold for $25,000 to TechCrunch. InviteShare is a service that lets users trade invitations to online services that are still in private beta, like Pownce or Joost. Overall, InviteShare offers up invitations to 42 different sites at the moment, with the capacity to add new sites.

And odds are they will, now that TechCrunch is involved. The technology blog frequently writes about invitation-only online communities and services, many of which we could see added to the InviteShare pool.

Does this all sort of defeat the purpose of private beta tests where a limited number of individuals gets to test out a new product? Maybe. But the folks most likely to use InviteShare are the same folks most likely to be good beta testers; geeky and enthusiastic about new services.

TechCrunch's Mike Arrington says the site had been planning to create an invitation swapping service of its own when InviteShare launched. After writing a positive review of the site, Arrington admits that he may have driven up the value of the site his company eventually purchased.

Tags: inviteshare, techcrunch