Not Beta.
Introducing a new product news platform
The bigger the hype, the harder the fall
There's this concept of the Trough of Sorrow, a place you find yourself after an initial marketing event, crowdfunding campaign, or press release. After the dust settles, you may find yourself working on something you no longer have interest in, or maybe never had any interest in. This is the stage where most new things fail.
This isn't our fault. We're consistently set up for failure inside flawed systems. Crowdfunding on Kickstarter, upvoting on Product Hunt and Reddit, and tech news covered on Techcrunch have turned the process of building a product and business into a doomed popularity contest.
How can we design a system that places us deep within the pit of success?
The way out is through Releases of Improvement. If we design a system where the primary unit of measurement is incremental improvement, we get a system based on consistency through commitment, not gambling on spurious moments of hype. We strip out mechanisms that encourage gaming the system, remove algorithmic ranking, and use the available space to show more releases of improvement.
Progress over perfection
“These days it feels like everything is in beta stage forever. That’s a cop out. An interminable beta stage tells customers you’re not really committed to rolling out a finished product... Don’t wait for your product to reach perfection. It’s not gonna happen. Take responsibility for what you’re releasing. Put it out and call it a release.”
I'm a perfectionist. It's hard for me to release things into the world that don't meet my expectations. But something doesn't have to be perfect to be ready. For instance, it would be easy to slap a beta tag on this website to protect my pride. But in doing so I cheapen my effort, and I cheapen the product of that effort.
The Release
So here it is: somehow.com.
And the progress.
I invite you to join me by creating a new product page or becoming a member and support the builders who have committed to incremental improvement.
As a product page owner, you are able to deliver product updates through our platform with our changelog feature (or bring your own changelog!). As a member, you can curate and like product pages, and follow and comment on updates. It's a good way to keep up with the products you like, use, and rely on.