Strategy for Crowd Sourcing and Iterative Development

Question

Hi all,
I've recently gotten involved with a web-based crowd sourcing project. I have two main issues, both with several subquestions. Any insight into any of these questions would be greatly appreciated.

1) Do you guys recommend going through a closed beta testing period?
Or encourage as many people as you can to use the site?

If the site is completely user content generated, then a private beta is probably better. -- How many people so I pick for this beta? Do I pick one use case, multiple use cases, or all the use cases I can think of?

What are ways of online advertising to get the word out there?
For sites such as TechCrunch and Digg, is it better to have a more established user base, or should I go through from the getgo?

2) Once you have your product launched, how often do you guys iterate on the public site?
I know that I should keep my current version separate from the version that is currently being used by the users -- what tools do people use to do this kind of development?

Thanks for any input,
Michael

EDIT -- I guess I thought there would be more responses :)

Answer 1

If your website is completely user-generated content (UGC), it makes no sense to spread the word too far before there's any content. People will come, look at that empty ghost town, move along and never come back.

A good strategy is to set up a front page just with the pitch and a place for interested people to leave their emails, then invite them to a closed beta period (maybe giving each a couple invites).

It might help to pay some people to add seed content in the beginning. But do NOT, under ANY circumstance, give any prizes or any kind of financial incentive to users before you have a strong enough organic community to set the standard of what good content looks like and to help you weed out the cheaters.

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As for deployment, unless it takes forever (which it shouldn't) you should do it as often as possible. Especially in the beginning, where you're trying to gain the trust and support of the early adopters. Showing responsiveness to their feedback is the best way to have them help you more. At this point, with a small enough number of users, you can send private messages thanking them for their feedback and saying it's been fixed, and they'll feel very special about it.

Answer 2

Or encourage as many people as you can to use the site?

Pick people who will be the best kind of users for your site, don't entertain users who will create a negative experience for everyone else.

You should also think about the kind of audience/culture you want to build, when people first come to the site they will see what kind of content already exists. If it's pictures of Cats they will think 'oh it's all about cats', I'll add my ats, that's fine if you want you audience to be about cats, but it's wise to think about how you can craft the initial user experience to show what you want the community to be about.

I would start reading up on online communities Flickr is a good place to start

What are ways of online advertising to get the word out there?

Ignore TechCrunch, focus on building something that appeals to real people, not the people that read TechCrunch.