On Launching
Leading up to the Write.as 2.0 soft launch I gathered feedback on what new features users wanted most through a quick survey. In return for their feedback, they got to reserve the Write.as username they wanted before everyone else.
More than 70 people took the survey and registered a name before the #launch. And the ones that left an email address got an email last night letting them know they could finally log in.
When you're building a product, milestones like this are great catalysts for more forward progress. When your work is finally out in the open, there's suddenly some urgency to everything you do. Write.as ran perfectly without updates for 11 months while I worked on the next iteration. I could take a break or defer a bugfix until later if I didn't feel like working on it at any given moment. And even when bugs were squashed, it wasn't as impactful as it is now, where each improvement brings real users a slightly more stable product.
Next week we'll start spreading the word more outside of this group of users we already know like the product. I'll continue updating here (i.e. partly testing in disguise 😉) on our progress as we go.