What Happens in Vegas Happens without Us

Tonight Jason was supposed to make his annual pilgrimage to Vegas for March Madness, but late yesterday he decided not to go. The number of features and bug fixes remaining is going to require every waking and non-waking minute of the next three weeks until launch. And as more beta users sign on, more feedback comes in. This would seem an easy decision to make - get your business off the ground, or go to Vegas - but for the following: Jason’s last day at his old job was yesterday, a buddy had scored a free suite at the Venetian, and the airfare was cheap and nonrefundable. So right up until yesterday he was still planning on going but taking the laptop (those who are skeptical that he would actually work while in Vegas do not know the guy). But is it worse not to go to Vegas, or to go and be stressed out by not not going to Vegas?

Turns out it was the right decision. Our 2-year-old developed a fever that by 2AM hit 104 degrees and had me convinced he was about to die of bacterial meningitis. Not the case, thankfully, but we ended up talking to a nurse on the phone at 3 in the morning about every possible symptom and condition, including, “Has he been in contact recently with any lizards, snakes or other reptiles?” Answer, yes! He actually touched a snake last week at preschool when Lizzie the Lizard Lady brought in her menagerie for the kids to touch. (When he told me he had pet a “ake” I assumed that one of us had the wrong animal in mind.) To get back to the point - our son will be fine but is sick, so better for all of us to have one extra parent around the next couple of days to dispense baby tylenol and watered-down pedialyte on demand.

We’ve been debating for some time now about when to open Ballhype up to the public, and whether we should go from closed beta to open beta and then launch, or just launch. As the marketer, I am of course oblivious to the reality of how much development work and testing are required to launch a public, scalable application, and so my position in these discussions has been that we need to get out there before (yet) another competitor does. Jason is more conservative and realistic because… well, because he’s doing most of the work.

The outcome? We’re putting a stake in the ground to time the launch with the opening day of baseball season.

Posted by Erin 14.Mar.07 Beta, Parenting Read more Comments (2)

In beta

We launched closed beta for Ballhype on February 1st. I think technically it was 2am February 2nd when Jason deployed, but I’ll give him credit for hitting the deadline. Right now one of my challenges is to keep the beta testers engaged. There is a core group that you can tell has already incorporated Ballhype into their regular online consumption of sports news. The others have been checking out the site but not participating actively. It’s a classic example of Jakob Nielsen’s 90-9-1 Rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.

His point is that you can’t eliminate participation inequality, but you can take measures to avoid a total imbalance. I find it interesting that we’re already seeing this among our beta testers, a group that I would have thought would all be in the top 10 percent of active users — at least. It’s a good lesson for me though not to take any user or her interest level for granted! And to take steps to make participation easier, more fun, and more useful — even in beta.

Posted by Erin 05.Feb.07 Beta Read more Comments (2)