Twitterified taking off: is private beta a mistake?
Somehow, seemingly out of nowhere, Twitterers have started to notice Twitterified. I guess a few positive reviews help.
But would Twitterified have received these positive reviews, had it not moved to open beta? I think not. The service was in closed beta for a couple months, which allowed me to kill a few gremlins I found in the system, but even so it did not attract enough adventurous users for its own good. So, I followed the “old” web 2.0 advice: release the product (early), even if you feel that it is not ready. Of course, I need to keep an eye on all feedback and fix problems as soon as they are reported. I do not think that an open beta can work any other way. Fortunately, due to the tool’s nature, feedback can be found in a very obvious place 
I consider myself lucky because I already have some experience with scaling applications — thanks to clicdev.com and past experience as a web host — and as a very clueless user interface “victim” I do spend a lot of time thinking about all the ways that an application could confuse me. But even so, that’s no reason to dwell in closed beta country. When I look around, it seems that no matter how talented and how successful web entrepreneurs have been, products launched as closed beta have always had a hard time making it as a mainstream product.
Not that I am thinking of Twitterified’s minuscule critical success as anything mainstream, or that I would dare compare its audience to Pownce! But, interestingly, when I look at Pownce and who its backers are, it doesn’t seem to have achieved the success it seemed poised to. Of course, I am not singling out Pownce. It just happens to be one of the projects I found really interesting.
In conclusion, I do not think that I will every launch anything in closed beta again. It’s just not worth it!
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Comments
Glad to see you found the posting we did on EverythingTwitter.com and I am still playing around with the client right now. I did a much fuller review on my personal blog.
http://thesocialnetworker.com/tsn/tsn.nsf/dx/twitterified-the-new-air-client.htm
Chris
@IdoNotes
November 17, 2008 @ 2:15 am
Chris, I appreciate it. In fact, v1.2 is now offering something you found missing in the original release: a way to say “Ignore this person” and all their tweets will be collapsed until you “un-ignore” them.