New, Major Features Every 4-6 Weeks
As Thai alluded to on his blog, we release changes to the Homestead.com site and the SiteBuilder/SiteBuilder Lite software at an extremely fast rate: our ‘small change’ cycle is every 2 weeks and our ‘big change’ cycle is every 4-6 weeks. Our release rate is not nearly as rapid as myspace, I guess, but it’s certainly one of the fastest for an established software company with tons of paying small business subscribers.
That article about myspace is interesting because it implies the only reason frequent updates would anger users is if something breaks. In my experience, many users are also resistent to updates that force them to alter the way they interact with the UI. In general, we try to add features and update features without forcing users to re-learn the interactions they are already comfortable with. I wonder if the younger crowd over at myspace is more resilient and more welcoming to changes that force them to re-learn or if myspace has found that they, too, try to keep the common interaction experiences unchanged.
John Tokash 