Ever since GMails’ invite only beta release, you see a ton more companies trying out an invite-only alpha/beta release.
Obviously, it does two immediate things …
1) Generates buzz surrounding your product/website … “It’s cooler simply because it is invite only”
Anyone remember this model from the various night-clubs, elite new year’s parties and private gambling rooms in casinos and how it helped hype them beyond mere marketing dollars ever could? Exactly!
There was a point in my life (read, pimply high schooler) when I would never get these invites and, in natural teenager fashion, would revolt loudly by calling them “not good enough for me anyways”.
However, I’ve seen a lot and been invited a lot more since then … and I’ve got this to say … Invite-only systems for software and websites are way cooler than invite-only systems for parties and live events.
Why?
Imagine, not being invited to a live event … once it’s gone, it’s gone. However, not being invited to an alpha or beta release of a website is just a matter of being given access a little later. For the website owners, it has all the advantages of the invite-only system of the real world without any of the issues of how to keep the most number people happy for the longest possible time.
2) Continues the tradition of giving Beta access to people so everyone working with your product/service understands that the kinks are being fixed in real time and that the final product will have their say/tips incorporated (well, most intelligent tips are incorporated). And expands this tradition by mixing marketing with customer feedback mechanisms.
Though, I wonder how these companies filter out the people whom initial invites should be sent to.
One obvious method is list out
a) people you know
b) your peers
c) people who are popular and have a say in the Industry and related Media
d) people who are active in related forums
e) all your FOAFs (Friend-of-a-Friend)
f) random people who have ever commented on your blog/signed on your guestbook/given you their biz. card (?)
27 Oct 2005 at 9:11 pm
I think you’re missing a couple of points here [or perhaps have implicitly assumed them without explicitly stating them]
1) A lot of these alphas/betas are for Web based applications. Makes it very easy to go to alpha/beta and keep pushing upgrades – I can tell you that pushing client side upgrades while keeping beta testers happy is one of the tougher tasks out there in my experience.
2) Scaling upwards – the invitation model works very well when you want to scale upwards in a phased manner. Gmail practically never had a serious breakdown…there were momentary lapses, but for the most part, it was up and running. That was related to the way they assigned invitations to users to hand out – you could never have more users than the total number of invitations that you’d given out – and even given the hype factor, at any given time, atleast 10-20% of all invitations would probably remain unused.
3) Rather than merely give users access to features to test and tweak, use them to build your system, apart from a basic strong core. Look at meebo [ http://www.meebo.com/ ] for an example of that. I’d say GMail did follow a similar pattern too.
Would be nice if you made this post some time back though (I’m sure it occurred to you some time ago but didnt make it to the blog…) Trends are always nice to catch when they’re just happening, rather than when everybody is playing copycat…
28 Oct 2005 at 12:14 am
Aaah! the invite only world. When news broke out that y! mail was being tested, people started asking me for invites. It was very hard to convince people that the new thing does not have invites and is tryuly a pilot launch and really random people get selected.
28 Oct 2005 at 10:54 am
Computronix:
1) Not all the popular invite-only alphas/betas are for web based applications. Right now, one of the most popular invite-only beta programs is being run by Microsoft, for their Accounting Package, for Visual Studio 2005, etc. Sure it’s always tougher to push client-side upgrades because it requires a download, an installation, etc, etc. No arguments there. However, client-side betas exist, and are popular.
2) Well, it was easy for GMail invites to expand exponentially … It’s like getting 3 wishes, using the first 2, then the 3rd wish = “For my 3rd wish, I wish I have 3 more wishes” … create more accounts using your invites. I know others (cough, cough) who did that.
Aaah, but this isn’t a current trend at all. Betas being selective has happened for years. All I’m trying to point out is the way the web helps make it faster and more of a marketing juggernaut!
28 Oct 2005 at 9:21 pm
We’ve always had invite-only betas. But that model relied on the company inviting the user.
GMail was a pioneer in the “handing out invites you can use to get other people in” trend.
Which I presume is the point you’re making, and which is what I referenced in my reply :)