With the current wave of Web2.0, we have seen thores of products coming up. Most of them arent able to get to most of the users and get buried under the wave itself (other products shadowing them…). The ones which are able to get attention of the users, are lucky and also need to maintain that exposure in order to not get buried under the wave.
Recently I have been following the launch of couple of such products. All of them have followed different strategies from release point of view.
In order of ease (from the users point of view), my choices are:
- Meebo. Meebo team did 2 great things. First they took an existing technology and delievered it in a beautiful way. Second was their release cycles. Awesome work by the team again in keeping the users informed, and even taking the ‘demo-or-die’ attitude to the end users. They uploaded release after release in short period of a week even, and incoporating the user feedback as they went ahead. First thing they get here is the ’shock-and-awe’ of the user. They went live in a very short period once the news was out. They for sure had a private release for friends and family initially, but it was well guarded. Once the news was out, the site was live. This way the initial impact on the users was cashed in, and I am sure most of the first time users became regular users. Once the ball was rolling, it went into a continuous feedback. More feedback from the users prompted more frequent and bug-free releases.
- Morfik. As opposed to the release process Meebo went through, Morfik guys decided to launch at Web 2.0. They carried along a real life application demo, created using Morfik technology. This is good. If you arent ready to let users get their hands wet with your technology, you atleast show them an application or two, so that they can grasp the idea in a concrete way and relate back to something that they do. Once out of the launch date, Morfik posted a nice timeline of further releases of stuff that would lead to final release of the AppBuilder itself. This is nice, you dont let the users go away, and instead keep information flowing in packets. Then the Morfik Pioneer Programe was launched and also the Morfik forums was created and released to public. Another application built using Morfik technology. User still stick around and are getting eager and eager to see the real stuff. One thing for sure, very less people are lost in this process.
- Riya. Team at Riya is playing with a nice technology. They are getting nice press ( best in all 3 discussed here). Are they creating more users (who will return)? Not sure. I didnt want to say that, but this just came to my mind. Right now the numbers are around 25 Alpha-I testers. Another 1000 for Alpha-II by early tommorow, and another ~6300 for a later release based on how the Alpha-II goes. These are big numbers, but are they sustainable numbers? I dont see anything wrong in the technology. Its the release cycle that I am worried of. Riya had been there for some time now. Most of the people get turned off when they hear so much about the product around the ethernet, but still see no way to try the product. What Morfik guys did at this point, was that they released a video of the product being driven to create a demo application. I havent seen much at Riya.com outside the static screen shots posted in the tour. Once the users stick around for a 7-10 days to get his/her hands wet, and dont hear much about it, I am not sure when and will they come back again. I can be easily wrong here (after the Google-Riya rumour though). I am sure guys at Riya are doing the best and being careful about how much they open up the pipeline, given the resource hungry application we are dealing with.
Technorati tags: Riya,Morfik,Meebo
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