Introduction

Recently, the Twitter clone identi.ca launched. Identi.ca interests me more than the microblogging services Jaiku, Pownce, or Plurk because identi.ca is open source.

Of course, identi.ca has gotten some criticism. At the time of this writing, identi.ca is shockingly featureless. There are also some minor bugs, and it appears to be unstable at times. I have seen PHP errors on the page, timeouts, and identi.ca messages (informally called by the community as dents) not appearing. Identi.ca supporters counter that identi.ca was released early and it is expected to have problems.

But this raises an interesting question. Should a microblogging service open up to the public when it has few features, or when it is fully polished? Open source applications traditionally allow input from the community at a very early stage. But when a product is released to the public, it generates a lot of buzz, which is useful in getting people to use the product. This buzz can go away when people get bored of talking about the product, and it is possible that potential users could become uninterested with the service and not come back when it has new features and bugfixes.

Of course, a lot of open source applications can still be open to the public early and generate the most buzz at the right time. Firefox is one example of this. Even though many people had tried out the Firefox 3 alphas, betas, and release candidates, Firefox still got a lot of buzz during Download Day.

But the thing about Firefox 3 and Download Day was that Firefox generated a lot of buzz by attempting to go for a world record. Attempting something like that is much more difficult for smaller organizations.

But so far, I seem to have overlooked an option. I have only mentioned going public early or staying completely private until the service is, for the lack of a better term, done. There is always the option of the invite-only phase. In this situation, the user base grows as people invite others, but the growth is slower as people have to be able to obtain an invite to be able to use the application. Invite-only testing also gives more control over how many users join, because the application developers control the invites. This means that the growth of the userbase can be slowed or even stopped should scaling problems appear.

Also, I’ll note that in my idea of an invite-only microblogging service, anybody can view the messages of a user, but only those with invites can register accounts and post replies.

Below are the advantages and disadvantages of going public from the start, staying private until the product is finished, and

Going public from the start

Advantages:

• You have more eyes looking out for bugs.
• You have more time to build a community, which is a big part with Twitter clones.

Disadvantages:

• If you are not careful about how you market it, people could see your service as uninteresting as people have already talked about it.
• The community might not come if your service doesn’t have necessary features or is buggy when they tried it.

Staying private until the application is polished

Advantages:

• The application is abundant with features.
• The developers have the ability to radically change the service without worries. There are no users to be affected by the changes.
• If the application is tested properly, bugs are caught quickly and before the bugs annoy any users.

Disadvantages:

• The developers cannot listen to the wishes of the users. This means that time might accidentally be spent on features that the users do not think are completely necessary.
• Usability testing is limited to very few people.

Going with an invite-only testing phase

Advantages:

• Control over the growth of the user base.
• Hype as not everybody can get a first-hand look at the service.
• Benefits involving the community without the negatives of going public early.

Disadvantages:

• Microblogging generally works well when you have a large community. Having a small community reduces the use of microblogging as fewer people can respond to a user. Because of this, the user is given more incentive to invite other people to contribute to the discussion.

Conclusion

None of these paths for microblogging services are perfect. I say that it depends on the developers. If there is a clear plan for marketing the service, going public from the start looks like a good choice. If the developers think it is best to gradually increase the userbase to test see if the application scales up properly, invite-only seems like a good option. If the developers want a grand opening, or some other better reason, staying private until a later stage might work for them.

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