How to to get a Google Wave invite (even if you didn’t sign up earlier)

The internet is all heated up about Google Wave as today Google would be sending around 100,000 Google Wave preview invites to selected users. And all tech enthusiasts are berserk over grabbing an invite, no matter what. But would you be receiving one ?

If you need a Google wave invite, you need to do either of these following and of course wait.

1. Be a developer who’s active in the developer preview of Google wave. ( No ? No problem)

2. Should have signed up and given feedback on wave.google.com when it launched in May. ( You didn’t ? No problem )

3. Should have been using Google Apps, for some time. ( Not yet ? No problem )

If you’re reading this text, its likely that you didn’t do either of these or is unsure if what you did is enough to get an invite. But fret not. There must be some alternative solutions to getting a Google invite. Lets see.

1. Use Twitter to find people who already got an invite

Earlier when Gmail was introduced on invites, there was no Twitter and the strategy worked well. But today you have Twitter and every one of those 100,000 first time invitees might (most probably) have an additional invitation to send out to their friends.

Okay, so if I got a Google invite, I’ll immediately tweet about it and invite a hundred others to join in. So just make sure you’re one among them. (not just me, but others who might get the first time invite.)

For this, you could save a search (via Tweetdeck) for something like “Just got a Google wave invite” Or “Yay ! Got the wave invite” or something similar and get alerted immediately when someone gets an invite.

2. Set a Google blog Alert to find users who got an invite

You might already know how to use Google alerts to get alerted for blog posts or news about something that interests you. Use it to set a Google alert for blog posts on Google wave. When someone gets an invite beg them for including you.

Obviously, first time users may not have hundreds of invites to give away, but as Google says in its official blog,

We’ll ask some of these early users to nominate people they know also to receive early invitations — Google Wave is a lot more useful if your friends, family and colleagues have it too.

So, you must be able to contact the early user, in order to get an additional invite. If you can do it, problem solved.

Alternatively, you could also try asking Google for an invite. (Not likely to get it right away though, reasons being obvious.). Follow the #GoogleWaveInvite hashtag on Twitter, to keep you updated with possible free invites.