I'm curious whether their long closed Beta helped them or harmed them. Their invite-only beta lasted 1yr, from feb 2023 to today.
My sense is that the "exclusivity" style launch that Facebook and Gmail used successfully is pretty much played out and ineffective now. All it does is kill broad interest in your platform right when a deluge of users into your new social network is most needed and valuable.
My sense was Bluesky should have done a quick semi-open beta of no more than 3-months just as a last bug and scalability test, and then opened to the public. Make it invite-only, but distribute invites liberally, make sure anyone who wants one has one. Interest then was higher, other options were still in development or early stages. Every month of delay was a month people could find other alternatives, and they delayed a year.
Then again I haven't been following it that closely. Any HN'ers that have been following it closely since last year have an opinion on this?
My sense is that the "exclusivity" style launch that Facebook and Gmail used successfully is pretty much played out and ineffective now. All it does is kill broad interest in your platform right when a deluge of users into your new social network is most needed and valuable.
My sense was Bluesky should have done a quick semi-open beta of no more than 3-months just as a last bug and scalability test, and then opened to the public. Make it invite-only, but distribute invites liberally, make sure anyone who wants one has one. Interest then was higher, other options were still in development or early stages. Every month of delay was a month people could find other alternatives, and they delayed a year.
Then again I haven't been following it that closely. Any HN'ers that have been following it closely since last year have an opinion on this?