Associated Press writer Rachel Metz covers InviteShare, the company we acquired last month that lets users get hard-to-find invitations to private betas.
I spoke to Rachel a couple of times while she researched the article. She mentions the fact that some startups might not like the fact that InviteShare allows people to bypass the normal invitation mechanisms they set up. But she also gets the fact that if someone wants into a beta badly enough to go through InviteShare, they are probably the perfect person to test the product. And the days of people paying for beta invitations on eBay should be long gone now.
Hmm – Michael, I assume this would make more sense on the inviteshare blog?
How do I submit a story onto this site? I cannot find a “submit story” link or an email for Michael Arrington. Sorry if this is an inappropriate place to place this story. I have added some screenshots and photos from Amazon Fresh to my blog.
http://allthing...a.blogspot.com/
Hi Michael,
Totally so: Nobody pays for betas. I think it has come the time for the other way around. Companies have to pay for finding users to test their products as any other industry. I had classmates at college who got paid for simple medical research. Why this industry is going to be different.
Of course it is a great to find focus groups or testers for unfinished products. The other kind of service you could provide is to centralize all the coupons for invitations and discounts all the sites have and I never know where to get. Enter your coupon number or discount number here? I never have those. Does anyone has? Maybe you could centralize these.
Mario Ruiz
@ http://www.oursheet.com
InviteShare is a great idea but it has a HORRIBLE user interface; so much so that I find it completely unusable.
In reference to the idea that InviteShare attracts people that “are probably the perfect person to test the product,” it seems that some of the closed betas out there are also realizing this pretty quickly – I just got an invitation directly from ooma.com to beta-test their upcoming free phone service specifically because they saw my email address on the list at InviteShare. They are going so far as to send me their phone for free – a value (they claim) of US$599.
However, having run mid-to-large-scale QA efforts, I can definitely see how giving up (theoretically) US$600k to get a field test of 1,000 live users who (theoretically) will return detailed bug reports and feature commentary is money well spent. Granted, there’s no gating process to use InviteShare (other than the craptastic UI that Sprezzatura referenced) to guarantee that the “beta tester” has any skills at doing so, but in my experience, people who get excited about a closed beta usually learn pretty quickly to deliver what’s expected of them.
Hey why isn’t invite share Linked to CrunchBase !?
Congrats!
“But she also gets the fact that if someone wants into a beta badly enough to go through InviteShare, they are probably the perfect person to test the product”
OR
They are working for the startup that will appear next to your company in the TechCrunch roll-up post titled “Latest 237 companies in domain X”
InviteShare – Everyone is Invited?
Bullshit – Only a handful of sites handpicked are allowed to give away invites..How are the others supposed to give away to their invites?
I checked out inviteshare a couple times already, and yes, the interface is rather confusing.
As a startup founder with a private beta going on, I could use that site to distribute a few more invitations, but I can’t find a way to do it…
umm…how’s this a business?
Great to hear that InviteShare is getting some more press–it’s well-deserved.
I agree with Sprezzatura, though, as the interface and some other “features” are in need of an upgrade.
As for invites on ebay going away, I don’t think that will happen anytime soon–unless ebay plans on banning the selling of invites. There’s going to be more sought-after invites in the future, and people will definitely use ebay for that–remember the gmail fiasco with invites being sold on ebay?
New trend is to get invitation to be a beta users of new start up… look at Joost and other sites.
What happened to the usual Disclaimer stuff
#6RB – LOL
I am a techcrunch regular reader and love it..but as an beta tester I honestly believe that the worst that happened to inviteshare was to be acquired by Techcrunch. The website has so many bugs and the interface is really confusing when you start using it a lot..:(
I like the idea. Though I have found that posting on a blog – such as TechCrunch’s that oftentimes someone from the company will contact me and offer an invite.
@confused(#11), you really dont get it? This extends the TC brand. The ROI is difficult to calculate, and brand marketing confuses many “execs” without education. You really need to structure your argument with some sort of reason and report back. Inviteshare endears users and developers by providing a mechanism to find qualified beta testers that wont freak out when say,”400+ members have their ph#s changed”. This allows early story breaks, and gives the reader value with breaking news (Are you aware Mike leverages his reach to demand exclusives?). Please explain how Google Reader is a legitimate business in and of itself.
techcrunch acquired someone? what was the selling price, $199?!
Just like Abbu said, inviteshare is a total mess right now.. It’s like some people did a great job to put it up and none of them is bothered to maintain it. Honestly, switching the sidebars right-to-left doesn’t fix the bugs, oh does it?
With all due respect inviteshare needs a lot of maintenance before we even talk a bit about it. Coz right now it is on auto-pilot. O^O
The last update was of 14th July 2007…???