Ask HN: sites for getting alpha testers

9 points·Everest··7 comments

Hi, my site is in private alpha and we are looking to recruit alpha testers to provide feedback/report bugs and more importantly add content. Are there sites that make it easy to recruit paid and unpaid alpha testers for web 2.0 sites?

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We're preparing to launch our private alpha in a week and a half at a local conference. Starting with friends and collegues is a good idea, we strongly believe. At least we're thinking this way because we're in an incubator, and launching at a conference for innovators and entrepreneurs.

Interesting...I assumed that since Mechanical Turk is pitched as a cheap solution for baseline intelligent labor, the quality of people who are part of the network is very low. As a bit of context, we need users who are willing to write reviews of online authors and bloggers. Do you think the people at Mechanical Turk can write intelligent reviews of David Brooks or Steven Levitt?

'baseline intelligent labor', 'the quality of people who are part of the network is very low'

Some mighty elitist assumptions there.

Don't assume anything. Do the actual work of checking it out for yourself. You could be surprised.

Sorry reading that post again, it was a little elitist. We've had a lot of trouble using services like Craigslist and I thought that the same type of people would be on Mechanical Turk

Why not post a link here on Hacker News?

Amazon's Mechanical Turk (mturk.com) would be one place for you to look.

depending on your website kind, forums (like digital points) can be a good place to find cheap testers (if your site is a non-brain application)

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