Wavii Misleads About Early Access

TechCrunch recently covered Wavii, a news aggregator that has been getting a lot of hype because they stuck it to the man.

Being naturally curious, especially with my latest post about PandoTicker, I attempted to sign up for early access.

This is where things got weird.

Wavii stated on TechCrunch that the first 500 visitors to visit http://www.wavii.com/techcrunch500 would gain early access to the service. I did so, and ran into a curious roadblock.

I still had to ask my friends to sign up to get early access. 

Not feeling the urge or desire to invite more friends, I decided the experience was a fluke, and went on a search for a different invite link.

This brought me to the newly minted PandoDaily, where they covered the announcement via the PandoTicker. They also had an invite link that was advertised as a way for me to get into the service.

So I clicked the link, crossed my t's and dotted my i's, and ran into the same issue as before. I had to invite more friends before I could gain access, even though the page clearly states that I should be getting early access.

I even got an email with a nice link saying, "GET EARLY ACCESS" which only looped me back to inviting my friends.

Huh?

Am I Seeing Things?

It turns out I am not alone in feeling a little bit turned around. On Techmeme, much of the discussion is not revolving around the product, but of their misleading invite system. That can't feel good!

As a Community Manager though, I understand why Wavii did this. This is no doubt an effective way to get viral growth going. It's not like this sharing tactic to drive bigger numbers is particularly exceptional; but the mix up in communication between bloggers and Wavii was. 

There was no mention that if I gave up my email, I would have to invite MORE friends to get access. If this was made clear to me in the blog posts I read, I would've been more receptive to taking the time to bother my friends. Now I am just annoyed.

That said, I don't think Wavii did this with malintent, as some might suggest. Yet, I do believe their communication with bloggers was lackluster at best. This was not Wavii's only mishap of the day either. They also lost out on full coverage from PandoDaily due to an embargo issue.

This has to particulary sting Sarah Lacy since both Wavii and PandoDaily are backed by CrunchFund. 

Hopefully Wavii recovers from this small block in the road, and gives users early access as originally stated in the coverage today.