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Does anyone else get tired of signing up for betas that never come to fruition?

2 points by bwsewell ↗ HN
I must sign up for 10 new accounts online each day... 8 of those 10 are likely some sort of email list for an upcoming beta. I find them on http://betali.st or on HN or just through various tweets. The thing that pisses me off, is I usually look at them and say, "oh cool, someone's finally making an app that does X" or "sweet, I've been wanting to make this app, but I'm glad someone else is"

And then I wait for the beta invite and it never comes. Then I stumble upon the url for the site a bit later and realize they shut it down and it never actually was developed.

Now, I can completely understand how developers can get wide-eyed and excited about an idea and immediately start marketing it as the next big thing, but then that excitement wears off and they drop it.

I guess my biggest question I'd like to pose to the developer community is:

Is it worth the having a notification sign-up for an app you have no intention of having running within the next 6-12 months, or should we focus on having these sign-ups when the finished product is weeks away?

3 comments

[ 50.8 ms ] story [ 21.3 ms ] thread
kjhughes
It may be that you're suffering from a (some would say, unfortunate) technique that has been promoted for assessing interest in an idea: Quickly throw up a sign-up page with a brief description of the idea, announce and/or advertise, and then use received responses to gauge whether the idea is worth pursuing.
bwsewell
yeah, I'm not sure that's a good way to feel out whether there's a market for a product or app. There are plenty of dev communities like forrst or dribbble where people can show off their ideas and try to gauge interest.
keesj
kjhughes is correct. A lot of these pages are meant to gauge interest. If the market doesn't seem to be there the founders won't launch the product and you'll never hear about the product again.

At Beta List we try to be selective and only publish startups that have a custom designed landing page. This weeds out a lot of startups that aren't really dedicated to launching something. This tactic is obviously not fool proof so I welcome any feedback you might have: marc -at- betali.st