An Alpha Is for Testing: Doing It All Wrong
by
on July 29, 2008,
Here at Profy, we keep a running tab of which authors are going to write about which topics so that we don't all end up writing the same article. Most of the topics clear out rather quickly, but sometimes we end up waiting for months for a beta invite to review a new application.
I have several I've been waiting on since the beginning of the year, and like any early adopter magpie, when I see the shiny new invitation in my email account, I jump on it. Such was the case this morning with Delver, which debuted their private alpha with a new design, new logo, and a whole lot of disappointment.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not reviewing their application, which is supposed to be an intelligent social search engine. I'm still excited about what I think the product could end up being. However, I received my invite, was able to log into my account, and quickly discovered that I have no invites. Now, I understand the idea that you don't want to quickly flood the system with new users and immediately crash it, and that makes sense. But when you are talking about a social search and I have no way to find any friends to socialize my search with either by a site-wide directory or giving me some invites, well, I can't even really take a look and give you any feedback, can I?
That's when I realized just how much of a rut Web application developers are in. Launches of new Web apps are starting to feel like they are created on an assembly line. Everything is so monotonous, from the buzz seeding to the press releases in inboxes, that no one is thinking outside the box any longer. Why didn't anyone sit down, realize what the app is supposed to do, and come up with a plan for inviting users and letting them get set up with a social network right away? It doesn't do any good to test an app in alpha status without having users replicate anticipated usage. And if app developers really think they are building the next big thing, then they need to be thinking of exactly what users are looking for, and will want to use the app for, and design everything accordingly, from the UI to the test processes. Otherwise, it will just be more of the same old thing. And we'll be writing the same old articles using terms like "EPIC FAIL."
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Svetlana Gladkova
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
I don’t know why all makers of social software don’t just assign alpha testers a random group of friends (n=the developers best guess of an optimal number for the service). The alpha testing world is so insular that some of them probably are your real friends anyways. That would solve your chicken-and-egg problem quite easily.
We are in public alpha, not private
Sorry that you don’t get invites, but there’s really no need.
Besides, you don’t really need to rebuild your social network bit by bit inside Delver. Instead, tell us who you are by adding links (in “My Network” page) to your profiles on favorite social networks - we’ll take it from there.
@Nicholas, random wouldn’t help me either. If the point is filtering it through people whose opinion I respect or like, a random batch won’t do the job.
@ripper As long as it’s invite-only and you have to apply for an invite, I call that private.
Also, that’s basing the assumption that the people I have friended on social networks are the same people I’d want to add to a group for search, which isn’t the case. There are some networks I use for personal friends (that I wouldn’t want to search through since most of my searching is work-related), while others are way too varied due to how I’ve added them. While I understand that there are some users who are fine with porting the same batch of thousands from service to service, I find it most useful to recreate my social network on each service so that I can tailor it to how I use the service.
Cyndy,
Delver attempts to “make your life easier” by bringing you your social graph that you have already created in social networks.
We are not a social network, we are a search engine that allows you to leverage the knowledge of your online social world.
Your point of not always wanting to search through all your friends is an excellent one. At Delver we realize that this may be the case, we therefore provide you with the option of adding search buddies. Search buddies enable you to give priority to results created or referenced by these people. Search buddies do not necessarily have to be people that are in your network or even people that you know. They can be people that you appreciate their knowledge and opinions and therefore would want to get results from them.
Also, keep in mind that if you are searching particular things that are work related, you will most probably not get results on these matters from everyone in your network, but rather from people that have have created relevant content on these topics.
It’s probably true that their launch wasn’t perfect, but they’re overworked, under the gun, and probably have intense pressure the release. A lot of us go for an imperfect release for faster feedback and more iterations. Service worked well for me, although I had to play with the settings a little bit.