brilliant example of surveying users about a feature before it is built

lightbulb.jpgThere’s been alot of talk lately on the idea of prototyping and demonstrating a product to solicit feedback.  The catch?  The product isn’t actually built.  This goes hand in hand with the MVP concept practiced by lean startups.

I was on BackType today, and I just witnessed an awesome example of this concept in action.

BackType is a search engine that indexes millions of comments across social media platforms and lets you query for particular topics that interest you.  Cool, right?  I performed a search query for “analytics”, and the resulting page had a small tab called “Trends”.

Curious, I clicked on it and was brought to this page:

backtype feature launchDrat, it’s not released yet!

Brilliant!  BackType has given me an excuse to come back and check to see if the tab is active.  Even better – they were able to collect my expectations before the feature has even been released (or built!).

This is product management crowdsourcing at its finest.

Well done, team BackType.

  • http://www.mutualmind.com/ Babar

    Well, a few days ago I also clicked on trends and it wasn't ready. I was disappointed that it wasted my time and never went back there.

  • http://mutualmind.com/ Babar Bhatti

    Well, a few days ago I also clicked on trends and it wasn’t ready. I was disappointed that it wasted my time and never went back there.

  • http://mutualmind.com/ Babar Bhatti

    Well, a few days ago I also clicked on trends and it wasn't ready. I was disappointed that it wasted my time and never went back there.