Tris- thanks for this post and your continued patience and understanding. I have now been part of the Foldera team for just about a month and I can assure you and your readers, as well as everyone who is waiting for their account credentials, that delivering a truly great first use experience is our number one goal. Oliver and I have been working closely with the rest of the team to address the issues we believe must be properly addressed to meet the unexpected demand for Foldera. From my perspective as a Foldera newbie and someone who has been writing about and testing solutions in the productivity and collaboration space for years, it's quite obvious we are addressing a pervasive and deeply-felt problem.

There has been a lot of concern about when the accounts will begin rolling out and what we have been doing to get ready. We have been engaged in finalizing the initial beta release feature set, building out infrastructure, adding key people to an already first-class team to take the project forward, and interacting with and responding to the excellent feedback we have received so far from our initial testers.

Before I joined Foldera, I wrote a post on my ZDNet blog saying many of the same things you do in this post - that a conservative and deliberate approach to rolling out a product is a good thing and all too rare these days. Trust me... I know just how frustrating it is to wait with great expectations to get your hands on a new piece of technology that you have high expectations for. I've been in that state on a constant basis for, oh... the past twenty years! ;^)

We're working hard to deliver an outstanding public beta experience and hope that you will agree the wait was worthwhile when we feel we have everything assembled and begin rolling out accounts to a larger group of testers.

You're welcome Marc. Now having been on both sides of the issue, I have a lot more understanding for the beta process. I used to just think it was cool to try out betas, but now I really understand their importance to developers. In your case, because you got such an overwhelmingly positive attention ... the beta process is so much more important. Betas are the new version 1 and it does have to be flawless. From chatting with Michael and Oliver I know that there are really cool things coming down the pike.

I know just how frustrating it is to wait with great expectations to get your hands on a new piece of technology that you have high expectations for. I know indeed.

Tris,
The claims of 3 million beta requests are lies.

http://haarball.wordpress.com/2006/03/14/a-couple-of-extra-zeros-would-look-good/

http://haarball.wordpress.com/2006/04/04/shel-israel-you-bloody-wag/#comments

http://www.shared-spaces.com/blog/2006/03/quick_links_mar_3.html

Don't get too excited yet.

Hey Tris,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts ... as Marc said, we have rolled out a number of accounts to early beta users, and are taking into consideration that feedback as we prepare to roll out many more.

We've never said three million accounts ... for the record, it is over 12,000 account requests by businesses, with a potential network effect of 2 million users.

To Anonymous ... I wrote the Shared Spaces article you linked to before I joined Foldera, and you'll note that Richard Lusk was quick to clarify that it was a computed number. Regardless, I think there are real reasons to be excited. Personally, I wouldn't have shuttered my own firm to join Foldera if there wasn't; and I doubt Marc would have left VanDyke either.

M.

Thanks Michael, I'll edit the post accordingly.

If this solution can do what I've heard and the screenshots I've seen, it could be something really great for collaboration.