Wordpress.com V.I.P.

One of the increasing new web trends is to develop services and make them invite-only to use them. Google with their Gmail service, pioneered this, surely others will follow this trend. So it has happened, and Wordpress is one of them.

If you don't know Wordpress, is a (pretty damn good) blogging platform available to download for free. Of course they are some requirements to have a Wordpress blog, a Server with PHP , and a MySQL database. Seems pretty low on the requirements, yet some of us, don't have to access and have to settle for other mediums, such as Blogger. To me Wordpress is pretty good blogging platform, but what makes it stand apart is the extensibility it has, with many plug-in you can download out there.

Recently, Wordpress has launched a stand-alone version of Wordpress, no set-up required- Blogger-like stuff, except it uses Wordpress. Upon hearing this, I e-ran to Wordpress.com all ready, and willing, to transfer void to a wordpress platform (my intention all along). Low and behold..invite only.

This V.i.p treatment has to stop, seriously. If you are developing a service, you need testers? Make them send a an email to developer_bob@wordpress.com or whatever and just make it a close thing, nobody has to know the service it's out there until you are ready to launch it for mass consumption. A nice coming soon page will do. This whole put your email here and when the constellation of Capricorn aligns with Jupiter we shall send you an invite blows. Sure maybe the service isn't ready to accept many more users, but again don't advertise it until you are ready to go public. Make it a close thing, as I said, post in the your forum..

We are looking for X amount of testers more, to try out our new ingenious idea. Click here to learn more.

This I believe is a much better way of conducting user testing/load on services than just having the whole invite thing. That's the traditional way of doing things, why this V.I.P. treatment all of the sudden?

Regardless, I'm looking forward what comes out of Wordpress.com. Hopefully it won't be a paid service alternative a-la typepad.com