iScrybe – but I miss some features
written on Nov.07, 2006
My post on iScrybe got a lot of attention – which is fun!
But some people sent me an e-mail saying “Hey, why didn’t you include the rest of the features in your video, like the cool ones announced earlier and shown in that video?” One of them were Chris over at Getting Crap Done who asked for the clipping part of it.
The simple reason is – it’s not yet available in the beta. It’s now in beta for a few thousand users. The reason for not including all features at the same time and not letting everyone in was announced by the CEO yesterday.
Faizan says: “At this critical stage, a solid approach to engineering the product has to take precedence over gathering users. The important point is to get feedback, analyze it, incorporate some of it, test it and roll it out AND add a few thousand new people to get their fresh perspective. The product will benefit greatly from a few such iterations.”
He also adds: “The word “Beta” has lost its meaning because of it’s now common abuse. As announced earlier, we do hope to take off the beta tag within the next 6-12 weeks, as soon as we think we have done adequate beta testing.”
I couldn’t more than agree! The beta hype has really gotten out of hand on the Internet… I’ve seen several examples of products not even close to “ready for market” but still they get it released just to get it out on the market and create a massive hype around the product. But in the long-run this will only break the reliability of the services out there.
November 8th, 2006 on 4:26 pm
Jonas, thanks for stopping by my blog to dampen my enthusiasm for iscrybe ;-).
The odd thing for me with Faizan’s approach is this:- in creating a great video of what appears to be a great app which always had the potential to go & spread, he has already generated tons of interest in the application. Now, it may be the case that this interest will linger long enough for when people are actually given access to try it i.e. the teaser.
Alternatively, people may simply forget about it & move onto the next “new” thing and thus all of the wave of interest created is simply wasted. Now, faddy users who try it once & don’t return aren’t ultimately valuable (unless of course they are influencers who tell everyone else about it, even though they themselves don’t have a use for it). But getting people “in the door” to try your site/service/app it is usually hard enough. Fab as it may be (which will be evidenced when tried perhaps?), having the door shut, will lose Faizal some valuable users.
I think it would have been better to post no details/video as yet until they were ready for “mass” market.