Stan as a beta-tester

A beta-tester is a person in a target market who is compensated (monetarily, in kind, or never) to offer feedback and sometimes testimonials of a product, a product's feature, or service.

TIP

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Innovation Life Cycle

It goes by many names: Technology adoption model/ curve/ life cycle/...

When an idea or concept is introduced to a group of people/ the public, it gets accepted/ used at different pace by different societies/ markets. There are 5 segments of such:

  • Innovators
  • Early Adopters
  • Early Majority
  • Late Majority
  • Laggards

Wins and Losses

I have been an innovator, very few times. I think, maybe I have not gotten my niche yet, 😅. I have however been in the early adopters and early majority camps and experienced wins and losses. Here are some:

  • Some products fail to achieve profitability hence die out 👎

  • Some products are 'killed' (decommissioned) by their creators 😠

    Sometimes you're one of the few (sometimes many) who liked it

    Examples:

  • Some products start as freemium then have a subscription/ paid product 🙄 (Of course, they need to make money)

    Examples:

  • Some start out as a paid product then become freemium 🤷

    This can be considered a win since at one point you gave the team behind it some runway

  • Some products are really good that what they supported becomes a feature in a supporting or competing product 🧐

    Examples:

    • [Quicklyrics] shows lyrics for audio and video that's playing on your phone. Shazam; Apple Music and Spotify now have this as a feature somewhat.
  • Some get bought by other stakeholders (Which might affect your user experience - positively/ negatively)

    Examples:

  • Early adopters sometimes are enrolled in a beta-testing program; hence they contribute to the future of the product (sometimes this comes with perks) 🎉

Current products I'm a beta tester of