From Dan:

Status Update: Bruce did his magic and switched us to Amazon SES and it looks like our email worries are all in the past. At least THAT set of worries. We also have to adapt to the new reality of “There is no ThereMail” (by which I mean you will no longer be able to send email directly to avatarName@there.com, and will have to use a webapp to do that sort of thing. And I’m hoping that if you DO try to send mail to avName@there.com we will send you an auto-reply with a link to the webapp, maybe with your stuff pre-filled-in)… Not QUITE as nice, but I’m sure everyone remembers how unreliable/slow the old ThereMail was.

I’m going to give Dan the OK to turn on self-invites for ThereIM only as soon as he’s ready. Repeat: ThereIM Only.

This doesn’t mean that everyone will get invited as soon as they self-invite themselves, especially if they’re at the “back of the line”.

We’re going to let the invites out a little at a time until we’re sure everything is going ok.

Just so everyone knows, the last bit of trouble wasn’t in There’s software, it was getting around the various email issues in today’s world.

Finally, even though ThereIM is free for now, it won’t be forever. Once we start charging for There, we’ll be charging for ThereIM. ThereIM is just a tool for accessing the service, which is what we’re charging for.