A few minutes ago, I received this e-mail from Olaf.
Dear Jon Bourne, Olaf says: "Hi Jon... Here's an invitation to create an WP.com account." You've been invited to try out WordPress.com! Visit this address to get started: [invite link] Regards, The WordPress.com Team
If you get a similar e-mail, you will be one of the lucky few who have received an invitation to the new WordPress.com service, a free blogging system hosted by TextDrive and maintained by the WordPress folks.
Yea! I have a WordPress.com account now, thanks to the generosity of Olaf, who was kind enough to send me an invitation. He received his invitation from TomK32, who received his directly from Donncha.
All this got me thinking: wouldn’t it be cool to be able to see the trail of invitations from the very beginning? Or better, a tree? Because blogging is so intrapersonal, it would be interesting to see who invited whom, and possibly know the relationship between the inviter and the invitee. XFN would seem a logical choice for the links themselves and to identify relationship. But there’s usually more of a story behind that one “Golden Ticket” being sent than simply “met” or “friend.”
Anybody want to take a stab at developing a WPMU plugin for tracking such invitations? I’d be willing to help, though I’ve never created a plugin before. I guess that hinges on whether the invitation system for WPMU in use on WP.com is released into the WPMU code base. Hey, Matt, Donncha: whaddya think?
In any case, I’m just happy to have my own nifty neato WP.com account. If anyone’s reading this, please leave a comment so I know someone’s been here! 
