Razvan Antonescu

I don’t think that it was a month this year when at least one Web 2.0 application wasn’t launched or announced. It is an interesting experience and I wonder how many will survive a year and how many from those that will survive will be rock stars. But that is another separate discussion.

This post wants to point a few of the PR strategies involved in creating a public image for new web services.

Key element No.1: Beta (and private beta)

Almost all the applications have borrowed something from Google. I am talking here about the BETA concept. Used by Google on almost all its new applications the BETA concept serves a few goals.

• Protects the company from attacks. If something goes wrong PR people or spokespersons pop-up shouting “Hey we told you it was a beta, we know is not perfect”
• Creates a bound between end users and the companies. Users feel involved in the development process and develop an intimate relationship with the applications and the companies.
• Gets you a huge free QA team. Not all the Beta users will be willing to submit bugs and from those that will submit a large part of bugs are in fact undiscovered features, but you will still get valuable data.

Downsides to overusing the Beta concept:

• Quite the ones that started the Beta craze unveiled its downside. Keeping an application or a feature too long in the Beta stage could lead the users to think that it’s a dead or abandoned project. From my own experience an interval between 2 to 6 months it’s the best solution.
• Betas work best within large, well established companies. For example I am not too willing to participate in creating content for a no name company that I am not sure that will be still on the market after a few months.

But beside the BETA concept, Google, starting with Orkut, has also introduced a new concept: Private BETAs. Basically it implies that a “select group of users” gets an account.

Goals:

• Gradually testing scalability. This is very important as I recently discovered and cannot be easily accomplished within a single company no matter how large it is.
• Create the feeling of elite within the selected users. Remember the Orkut and Gmail craze?
• Makes people yearn to get in.
• If you are in a competitive market, releasing your project to a small group of users that you know or that agree with an NDA protects the intellectual property you are creating.

Downsides to overusing the Private Beta concept:

• Users that are not in the private beta will be frustrated and if you have the bad luck to ignore beta requests from a blogger with a large number of readers you’re quite toasted.
• If you are using a private beta strategy to protect your application there are still big chances that an unwanted user will get in.

Bottom line for this:

• Used carefully the beta and the private beta are strong weapons on winning the market.
• There is no assurance that only using those elements your application will be a success. Always keep in mind the Orkut failure. Your goal should be creating a quality service.
• If no privacy is involved use a randomized method to get people in and make sure everybody knows that. The new Yahoo mail Beta is a good example.
• Try as much as possible to have a personal relationship with the beta testers. Avoid auto responders. Listen to their feedback and give back personalized responses.
• If you use the private beta concept don’t give users accounts right away. If you use a form for collecting addresses of people wanting to get in, send them a confirmation mail after 2 days or so. This will make it look like you have evaluated their credentials and you agree they are worth to receive access to your product.
• If you plan to charge for your product give to the beta users free accounts forever. This way they will continue to speak about you and it’s a bigger investment then contextual advertising.