We love the iPhone, everyone who is anyone has one. People talk about them, show them off, and twitter about them ever hour of the day. Yet we all know they are not the best mobile phone ever, do have all the features we want or even provide the support we as loyal customer deserve. Yet we love them.

We are all hearing about ‘cloud computing’ and how fantastic this is going to be. No one knows what it is and when any form of standard will be made which will mean at least as customers we can have one flavour and transferable version of a cloud. At least we can touch an iphone, a cloud is just one step too far. So why are we falling in love with this thing, no one knows what it is and how it will truly help us.

The cloud and the iPhone are two classic (MBA type) examples of technology sales. Create the demand and then develop the technology based on this demand. Build it in beta first, call it beta, make people pay for it and test it for free for you and then create the version that works, make even more people pay for it, make another version and so on until you run out of people or version numbers. Its a standard formula.

Apple, Microsoft, Google and others are expert at this. You can be too, so what is the recipe?

1.       Create the demand via low cost internet social media hype

2.       Build a prototype, soft launch the beta version into your social group

3.       Segment the market and add more social networking using key user groups

4.       Listen every day on what people are saying, answer with their comments will be incorporated into an upcoming version

5.       Create next version x.y.z,

The real trick here is to be fast in providing updates, so agile type development is important, this then gives people something to be involved with and as your testers you will need to be responsive.

Remember, that people like new things and therefore in providing updates and changes based on their requirements, testing or involvement creates a sense of belonging.