The Scarcity Marketing Ploy Is Soooooo 2007

Brad Feld complains about the whole concept of 'Private Beta'. He's done with it because in part it really means to him:

""we are early and buggy and can't handle your scale, but we want you to try us anyway when we are ready for you." I've grown to hate this as it's really an alpha."

I tend to agree with him but for me what i hate the most about private beta? The fact that ever since Google launched Gmail, private beta has been synonymous with attempting to create the notion of scarcity. We are so cool that everyone wants to get into our beta.

But more and more I'm seeing that strategy failing, flopping and being downright rejected by the community. Private Beta is boring and as we develop closer ties to our weakest links, we want to be able to ensure not only the cool tech kids get to play, but everyone gets to.

So down with scarcity marketing and up with getting it right in Alpha so you can stop pretending and just let everyone in!