Begging for an Invite or Why Beta Blockers are Bad
So, after hearing the news this morning that Viacom has agreed to post it’s videos on Joost (after demanding that YouTube remove 100,000 video clips), I thought, wow, this Joost thing is going to be big, I should probably check it out.
Well, I’m not sure if you’ve tried to check out Joost (fka The Venice Project), but it turns out that Joost isn’t quite ready to turn on. They are in beta testing, and it seems that the most popular way to beta test these days is to ask for people to sign up, and then let them know that you are so overwhelmed with potential beta testers, that you may never respond to them. Which might be okay if that’s where it ended, but then they throw this out there for you… if you happen to know someone who is currently a beta tester, they can invite you / give you a token, and then, you too can be a beta tester. (This seems like a trend that was started by Google with gmail.)
So now I find myself searching blogs for somebody that’s will to invite me to be a beta tester, but all I find are other people begging for invites so that they can become beta testers. Now, I guess any publicity is good publicity, but it seems that annoying your potential advocates by forcing them to beg to get a look at your product, might not be the best approach.
Now, don’t think this post was just another attempt to be invited to become a beta tester for Joost, but if you happen to have a spare token, I’d be happy to take it off your hands.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:25 am
That strategy seems to be catching on. It seems like a lot of people want to launch a beta version then figure out the kinks and relaunch after that.
Isn’t that what usability testing is for? When you get so many unknown people acting as testers, how accurate is that data? And how much of that feedback is useful?