The publisher of the once well-regarded media cataloging application confesses that feature creep and a lack of follow-through subverted their ambitions for its second major release, leaving many customers frustrated and disappointed where the company had intended to wow them.

“Let’s say, for instance, 80 percent of these features worked great. I’d think, ‘Yay, I did good, I added a bunch of great stuff to the new version, it was definitely worth US$20 to existing customers.’ But, that’s not how the customers see it — they see the 20 percent that’s buggy, and they think, ‘This is crappy? he released software that didn’t work.’“

This is an object lesson in how success, ambition and even good intentions can lead to a bad product even when the business is fully aligned with the customer experience. It’s also a clever bit of mea culpa-style media spin. Not that I think it’s dishonest; I just find it very savvy. Read the full article

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