For anyone involved in an online startup, the launch of Cuil earlier this week offered some good insight about the ins and outs of officially unveiling a new service.
While lots of media and blog coverage is the ultimate goal to gain attention and users, a far more important issue is making a good first impression with a service that fills a need and performs well.
Cuil got plenty of attention but it was hanmmered for not working and/or offering less than satisfactory search results. So, the question is whether Cuil launched too soon or whether expectations were far too high/unrealistic.
In terms of timing a launch, pulling the trigger can be as much a gut call as a pragmatic assessment that a service is good to go. The reality is no service will be perfect so at some point you just have to jump out from behind the curtain.
Sometimes, the reception is great (e.g. Jango) but it can also be savage (e.g. Flock). In fact, most startups get a rough ride because there’s no lack of critics – most of whom have little idea about what’s involved in building and launching an online startup.
The bias to kick rather than praise can be disheartening given the work and money that goes into a new service. But it can also be a positive in that many services are built in semi-vacuums. Sure, you can get feedback from friends, family and beta users, but it’s not until you launch that the real feedback pours in.
When that happens, the key is to listen, learn, assess, and then determine what it means and how to respond. In some cases, it may mean going back to the drawing board; in others it may be just a matter of tweaking some features and the UI. Whatever the response, smart startups should take criticism as an opportunity to take advantage of free advice from many people who know their stuff.
In terms of Cuil, there are many lessons to be learned, as well as lots of criticism to be assessed. What Cuil needs to do now is carefully weigh everything, and then make any strategic and/or technology changes to get better.
Sure, Cuil was beaten up and bloodied but it wasn’t knocked down and counted out. Like a tough boxer, Cuil needs to go back to its corner, get some good advice, and then come out swinging to fight another day.
4 Comments
Yep, that it went down spoiled my first impression. But I caught it up next day…
And giving me binary garbage (insides of rar archives and debian packages) as search results had massacred my second impression.
Stability is hardly only feature that they got wrong.
Maybe there is a bright side? Maybe new sayings will emerge like, I hope we dont get “Cuiled” when we launch!
Calling themselves the World’s biggest search engine and trumpeting that they index 3 times as many pages as Google creates an expectation of performance that wasn’t borne out. If they had launched with a different slant on why people should use cuil they would probably had an easier time. They failed abysmally on my searches and searching for markevanstech.com or wdawe.com don’t return the sites.
I think Cuil ought to shoot their PR team and try again. Spin can be a powerful thing, both positive and negative, and it only takes one wrong move to be thrown off the bucking bronco of popular opinion. Everyone deserves a second chance. I hope Cuil uses theirs to the maximum advantage!