Starting Small
Or why products are launched in private betas.
A few years ago Eric Raymond postulated the “Law of Linus”, which goes as:
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow
So why should a company limit the number of eyeballs allowed to interact with their new products? Clay Shirky gives us an important reason to start small and try to improve from there: community.
If you want to create a community from scratch, you can’t expect it to start big. Scale kills conversation, so you need to start small and not grow faster than the community can sustain. It is also important that the founders create a relationship with the first thousands of users, knowing them and being available for them. But they also have to keep in mind that the users won’t behave the way they want them to and limiting the way users can collaborate with each other is the worst way to lead a new product.
Not only that, there is also that old saying: “You never have a second chance to make a first good impression”. If you start small, you can make large-scale adjustments that may not be so popular without scaring your entire audience.