Another Pointless Blog

In this world of flash, glassy and glossy Web 2.0 that we live in the growing trend seems to be creating site’s in beta and then launching them with invites to select people. This is not a new practice and has been been used for many years, but now, it seems every new web 2.0 site with a team of developers is have beta trials with invites. Over on Invite Share there are countless sites that are being added to the long list of beta invites that are shared throughout the community, with more and more added every week this phenomenon of beta invites will not die anytime soon.

I’m sure that there have been many sites in the past who have used this beta invite program as a way to attract interest, raise popularity, nag peoples curiosity (after all, curiosity killed the cat) and also do the fateful bug testing of this soon to be ‘revolutionary program which will change the internet the way you know it’. From as far back as I can remember (and I could be wrong, please correct me if I am) Google’s Gmail program was the first major private beta release on the internet and it obviously sparked a multitude of invite programs. As Web 2.o websites are about the community beta invites revolve around the community helping the developers with bug testing as well as spreading the word. How many times have we all wanted to look inside the mysterious box but we couldn’t unless we were told to? Beta invites work in much the same way, people get desperate and even buy invites off eBay for ridiculous amounts of money while a lucky few get the sweet yet satisfying email of acceptance.

It is obvious that this concept of a beta program can help publicize your site egnourmously, but only under one condition: Your site has potential. No one want’s a beta invite to ‘George’s happy dog pictures,’ people want invites to networking sites, that involve the community, or make your life that little bit easier, for example, file sharing beta’s like Wixi and Wua.la. Evidence from large site’s that started as a small beta invite program are evidence of how it does work to build populrity and better capture interest. It works, and this is why:

• Curiosity
• People like feeling important because they are in an ‘exclusive’ group
• Help with bug testing
• Advice from other programmers
• and #1… beta invite programs makes your site spread at a rapid rate, across the web.

I am also guilty of getting into the beta invite craze, I have looked at every site on Invite Share and requested an invite for the ones that interest me (I plan on writing reviews for all beta’s that I think are worth a look at, like Skitch).

So you’ve reached the end of this Blog entry and may be wondering why I wrote this, a few reasons… I wanted to outline how successful beta programs can be, I wanted to provide examples of great beta site’s and a beta invite site and finally, If anyone has a beta program they would like me to extensively review please send me an email to Matt@AnotherPointlessBlog.com

If you have any questions/queries or concerns please email me or comment, I will get back to you as soon as possible!

Cheers,
Matt.

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