Consumer Fatigue (Or, death by Betas)

I was going to write a post on what I am seeing as the excessive proliferation of public betas for web products.  When I was looking around to see what else had be written, I saw Michael Arrington’s post from a while back, so I’ll hold off on saying too much more.

Very briefly though, I think consumers have limited attention for products, especially in a world with lots of substitutes.  Beta’s may seem like a good idea, but it may burn a company’s chances with their early adopters if they find the product weak and move on to something else.  How many times have you beta tested something, stopped using it, and then went back when the product was improved?  I can’t really think of many examples myself.