Since opening up the enthuse.me beta to the public we’ve been looking to grow our small early adopter community with quality users who can give us helpful and critical feedback.
We have benefited from having a few random bloggers write about enthuse.me and that has been helpful for driving users.
However, by far the most helpful site we have used is www.erlibird.com – Founded last year by Michael Siegler of Chicago (that’s in the USA), the site is very much aligned with the enthuse.me ethos of quality over quantity. Its early adopter community of around 12,000 (and growing) users are gently encouraged to give feedback by use of some ‘gamification’ methods. Users get badges and points for activity on the site which ranges from signing up with a start-up to providing meaningful feedback.
I’m not sure if it’s the quality of the user, the slick interface or the ‘gamification’ but the quality of feedback was top class with nearly all the user responses being detailed and useful.
Erlibird charge the start-up a small fee for this service and it’s well worth it.