Mac Uploader News

Tara just released the bad news: the Uploader for Macs won’t be ready for the next Alpha release.

Trust me — it’s worth waiting.  Better to get an Uploader that’s already stable than to have them rush something out to you that doesn’t work.

Upgrades and the Beta Issue

I’m not sure if the Riya team has made any drastic upgrades to the servers that host them, but Riya is significantly faster now than it was even two weeks ago.  Tara has promised that there’s some cool stuff coming down the pipe for the next alpha release, and I’m guessing that some of that venture capital money went to upgrading the servers and putting a big, fat pipe behind this thing.  Good call, team.

I’m not sure if they’re going to keep the Alpha tag when they release the unrestricted demo at DEMO next month, or if they’re going to move it into beta status.  Personally, I’m growing tired of seeing new services have “COOL NEW SERVICE” and then “beta” in small caps in the logo.  It was cool at first, but now it seems more like the trendy thing to do instead of an actual project status.  For example, how in the WORLD is Flickr STILL in beta?  You’d think that a service that’s been around for two years AND been purchased by Yahoo would be able to move past the beta stage at some point.  I’d caution the Riya team to not fall into that trap; they should keep an unrestricted alpha series open to the public while also undergoing true beta testing with a core team, and when it’s ready, release version 1.0 to the public.  At that point in time, I think people are going to be as sick of seeing “beta” attached to everything as I am and would much rather see “version 1” than another Web 2.0 service desperately trying to look like everything else that’s popular.  I know I’d be much more forgiving of a product if you didn’t have “beta” attached to your app, because beta doesn’t really mean beta anymore — it’s just the trendy thing to do.

News

– In case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard the news, I wanted to point out that Riya raised 15 million dollars in venture capital financing yesterday from Bay Partners.  They’re really doing some excellent things at Riya HQ, and I’m glad they were able to secure financing.  In my own dealings with venture capitalists, I find that it’s extremely important for a VC firm you choose to work with to closely mesh with the capabilities and vision of your company, or else it’ll be disaster in the making.  Munjal seems very excited about Bay Partners and the team he’s working with, and I applaud them for finding the right partner who won’t jump and sell out before the product is even ready for delivery.  Riya has the ability to become, five years down the line, one of the most-used web apps out there, and this investment will help them move the company forward as they legitimize photo search.

– The team is still preparing to release the unrestricted alpha of Riya at the Demo conference next month.  As most of you know, you have to score an invitation to use the service now, but once it’s released at Demo anyone will be able to sign up and test the service.  I think that’ll be a watershed moment for the team, because they’re going to have to handle huge numbers of users all at once, and it’ll be interesting to see how the app holds up.  Not saying that it won’t, not even speculating, because if there’s one thing I know about Riya, it’s that they are committed to delivering a top-notch product, even to the minimal amount of alpha testers using it right now.