You have stumbled onto my all-encompassing Theory of Service: people love getting comped. No matter how cheap or silly, if it came for free people will remember you fondly for it and give you their business in the future. And they will probably blog and post on HN about it too :)
If I ever open a restaurant I am going to randomly dispense free appetizers and desserts. If I ever run a (freemium) startup, I am going to randomly give away free accounts. Not to everyone, not so much that it hurts the bottom line, but enough that the buzz and goodwill generated outweighs whatever loss I'm taking.
There is definitely a limit there. No matter how cheap or silly, as long as it doesn't seem cheap, if it came for free people will remember. The times I have been given something free that is particularly cheaply made, usually something made out of very low quality plastic, I always think "Oh, these guys evidently don't care about their users/fans/supporters, if they're going to give me something that won't last 10 minutes".
I think its important to give away things that are not your core business. I like the pandora hat and I remember it fondly, but if my coworker got a super-awesome pandora account, I think I would just feel "dang, why didn't I get one".
If I ever open a restaurant I am going to randomly dispense free appetizers and desserts. If I ever run a (freemium) startup, I am going to randomly give away free accounts. Not to everyone, not so much that it hurts the bottom line, but enough that the buzz and goodwill generated outweighs whatever loss I'm taking.