"Everyone can create an account for free" - - That was close to one of the statements made during the HF20 debates and pre-activation, and post-activation of HF20. It is still something that is passed about by people in power. The truth of the matter is that you need a lot of SP to create an account for free. The cost as I and others suspected has gone up.
Still it is good to see that on-line business/d-apps can create and a few do hold a good amount of accounts should they have a need to create accounts for new users of their system. The number of accounts held by some of the d-apps and portals could be used in the future to judge a d-app/front end to the steem blockchain level of interest in promoting and on-boarding of new users.
Yeah. Its around 1300$ to buy into SP with the ability to claim new account 'tokens' - that is a reasonable sum.
However, most of us don't have that much use for 100's of potential accounts, and will likely end up passing them on somehow when they are required. The apps are getting hold of some, and as you say, if one is spotted creating a load that will be seen as a good indicator of them doing well.
Cheers for the comment!