Last week I got an e-mail from Google. The long anticipated account for Google Voice! I was so prepared to give it a try. Mocking everyone else that they didn’t get an invite would be my next game (Uhm no…). But at least I would have to pay less, as I would convince some people to use voip (in combination with wifi). When I logged in there was only a blank page and a notification that stated:
What a bummer. I noticed that other people experienced the same issue and freaked out.
It reminded me of a highly anticipated Google service: Google Wave. When Wave launched I was so excited, there had to be a way to get an account. Finally after months of waiting the e-mail arrived. At that moment my enthusiasm to use it had already somewhat faded away. It was hard to define what the goal of the service was and the ease of use was only suboptimal (e.g. adoption models).
(Technology Acceptance Model by Davis et al, 1989).
I invited some people to join but the fun did not begin. It was just a puddle of mud; the service needed some love and a lot of iterations had to be made. At that moment a lot of people thought it would rock their world, it would make e-mail obsolete and so on but until now this is not the case.
Here we will focus on the rollout of this innovation. I am still wondering if Google uses a special algorithm to select the beta-users (that can invite other users) or not. Sure, you can use the first-come-first-served principle but that might not be that adequate. Rogers, E. (2003) stated that the diffusion of an innovation is a bell-shaped process (cumulative an S-curve).
(Some authors discuss if this is still applicable: see for example Moore, G.A., 1999. One should note that it is difficult to distinguish between the adoption and (first) use in this context).
For (almost) every innovation you can find certain people that are excited to adopt it (the earlier adopters) while others are more reluctant (perhaps now is the time to stop and think to which group you belong for a specific product group such as fashion or smartphones ). Wave is a special innovation in that you can notice the fragmented network effect (every new users adds some value to the users to whom he connects with; it is a stand-alone service which makes it more complicated). We can state that Google Wave was too much too soon. At a certain moment almost everyone that wanted an account got one and there was a lot of criticism on the service (for example no mobile app). A lot of people who were enthusiast at first gave it a look and never came back because it was not worth the trouble. Google Wave might have sticked with these enthusiasts in the beginning (eg wave supports extensions) to make it an awesome service with feedback of others. The first-come-first-served logic might not be the best option at that moment because you simply need people that accept failures at the start-up of the service and first-come-first-served is just based on coincidence. This results not in selecting the best beta-users. When the service was more appealing this rule should not be used neither. An algorithm to select the most interesting (beta)-users (eg. dedication, Facebook friends, twitter followers, network density and so on) and some research (usability tests, persona’s, surveys) can help you out here. You can also use this algorithm to determine how much other people the user is able to invite in order to get a smooth diffusion. It was also an option to focus on the business people first and go public afterwards.
De Marez & Verleye (2004) use the PSAP-method and the analogy of a bowling game; you have to target each cluster with the right communication and attributes/service at the right moment. It is also important to stress the need to monitor the adoption process itself constantly by using different tools because up until now a lot of research focused only on a post hoc approach.
What does this mean for your start-up?
Start-ups are often more than happy when people are interested in their service; a first-come-first-served beta-system might be applicable but you have to consider the roll-out path of your ‘innovation’ (in the broad sense) or you might get stuck halfway. It is important to adjust your strategy to the type of website or innovation and monitor the rollout on a daily basis. Once people churn, they (almost) never return! You should state what your service is about; the prospects should be able to decide in 10 seconds if they want to use it or not.
So Google Buzz, anyone?
Beta invites available here
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Why did Google Wave fail to get significant user adoption?…
I think a lot of different factors influenced the crash: * Very high expectations (eg. it was just a beta) leading to a backlash (and negative peer influence). * Google didn’t select the right roll out strategy (first iterate with some early adopters …