Would people stop teasing the 99.99999% of the world who haven’t been able to actually lay their hands on Riya? We’ve heard from dozens of people, some of them quite respected like PC World that Riya — software that promises to be able to look at our photos and figure out who we are by our faces — looks and sounds cool. Ok, it looks and sounds cool, I’ve long since given it those props by the pictures and accounts, but here is what the rest of the internet sees when they visit the Riya website:

Of those who have filled out the beta, how many have received a pre-beta invite? Any non-celebrity bloggers? I guess those invites will start being filled in a “few weeks”? What is a few weeks? End of February? Beginning/middle of March?

A few people say they have actually been able to play around with the much hyped Riya (TechCrunch and Scoble come to mind, please correct me if I’m wrong), but until it’s actually open for beta to the rest of us non-celebrity blogger types, I shake my head when I read reviews like this:

I haven’t tried Riya myself yet, but it demos extremely well. It’s still in a private beta, but the company says it’ll be in open beta in a couple of weeks.

How can it demo extremely well, but the reviewer hasn’t actually tried it yet? Is this like an early video game demo where they show early pictures of it on the screen and people ooh and ahh over how cool the graphics are? Only to buy the game many months later and find out that most of the time the gameplay blows?

Yes, I do realize the DEMO conference is happening and that’s the point: show demos, but Riya has been represented at how many conferences now and they still haven’t launched? There was even, crazy as this may sound, rumors that they might be acquired — before they’ve even launched!

Oh, and BTW, I met Tara Hunt very briefly at Seattle Mind. She flew by my chair to take pictures of my Tablet PC guy. Seemed like a nice lady, but she never introduced herself or offered to tell me anything about Riya, offer up a beta invite or private demo even under NDA conditions. But the Tablet PC Guy caught a cameo in her camera eye. In her defense, I didn’t ask either. My bad, so now I am. Tara, please, I’m tired of reading about Teaseya, show me da money!

You know there is a point in the hype marketing train where things jump off track and for me that started this morning when I read about Teaseya yet again (see above) and still learn that the (invite only?) beta is still, still, still in the distance. Teaseya may look and sound cool, but with all the teasing they’ve done, there is a huge barrier of hype now standing before them.

Can they possibly measure up?

Sometimes I think a less hyped launch gives your company more of a chance not to disappoint those with growing expectations. Honestly, I don’t think if Teaseya recognized not only my face but everyone in my family tree on first run — and possibly solved world hunger and found alien life on other planets in its free time –could it possibly measure up to the gargantuan amount of hype it has received, but I’m still willing to review it and succumb to a mind altering experience and take back every even remotely negative thing I’m writing today.

Look at what happened with cocomment recently. They weren’t even planning on launching the beta, showed Scoble something in a Swiss chalet and he said, hey that’s cool show it to the world, and they started handing out invites. Even they were overwhelmed and that was with zero pre-hype, imagine the mountain Teaseya has to jump over. That’s the kind of launch where even if things go wrong and are rough gives a company a better change to ease into the market.

Then againya, maybeya I justya don’t like to be teasedya. How about youya?

Did this post make you go hmm?

Maybe Related Posts (plugin generated)

• Google to gobble Riya before it even has a public launch?
• Stop the premature eGooglation
• Anybody have an ‘i’ on using Scrybe yet?
• Beta invite signees beware
• Wallop of invite only offers
• Only geeks blog from the roof of their car while on a ferry across the sound