Excluding Users to Attract Users

Just like most of us in the class, I've been following the buzz on Google+ and trying to figure out whether it has staying power versus Facebook. I'm not convinced, although it was kind of exciting to get my invitation and see which friends of mine were already on it. This ties into an article posted in the NY Times today about start-ups (and Google+) using exclusivity to attract users. It talks about Google+, which apparently has over 10 million accounts now, as well as a start-up called SocialCam which also rolled out their new app little by little. There is more than one advantage to this strategy - in addition to getting people to want what they can't have, the developers get to smooth out any possible problems with the app or site. Some analysts have said that this approach is counterintuitive - don't you want the most people signing up as fast as they can - but especially for a company with brand recognition like Google, I think it's anything but. Google+ had buzz from the beginning, and those of us who were interested in these things were reading articles about it from the bloggers and journalists who got the first invites to try to see what it was all about, and how it was different. This approach won't work for everyone; apps and sites with little name recognition probably do need to sign up as many users as possible, especially an app like "Color" which had a ton of buzz but is now failing because it requires a tipping point of users to make it actually fun. But for sites with cache like Google or an app with a completely unique and new idea that early adopters would want to use first and spread the word about, it's definitely a winning strategy.