WOW!
I just sent out an e-mail to everyone who had signed up for the beta to let them know we were allowing another 100 people into the alpha release and asking if they’d like to take part.
Less than 10 minutes later, I already have more than 150 175 replies!!
We’ll be sending out the invites over the next couple days.
I’m thrilled to see that there is this kind of interest and also a bit surprised that so many people were sitting in front of their e-mail. 
We’re working hard to get the everything ready for our beta release, thanks for your patience.
Aww man, I was sure my reply only 13 minutes after the email would have netted an invite. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the BETA.
Any chance for some screenshots or a screencast of how the thing works to whet our appetite?
Hey guys,
I think I will have been too late to get an alpha invite to your testing but there is one thing that strikes me from your email invite.
Your alpha testers are going to be working with software that may at times cause them heartaches and may even occasionally lose their data. Not to say that it will, just that it’s alpha software and we all know the risks. Even some of feedDemon 1.6’s testers lost their feed list during testing.
Your alpha users will also be writing feedback to you through the testing stages and will be helping you build a far better product. They are going to be giving to you far more than you will be giving them.
Do you not think then that it’s rather biting the hand that feeds you in telling them they’ll have to pay for features they are testing 3 months from now? From the sound of what you’re building and the current marketplace I assume you’re hoping to eventually scale to tens of thousands of users.
Why lose a couple of hundred dedicated users for the sake of a few hundred dollars? Why not just ‘carry’ your alphas rather than turn round and try and bleed them? Most of them will be testing out of interest rather than need and are unlikely to carry on into a paid period anyhow.
I don’t know your figures and it may be that this observation is moot but you’ve kicked off as a ‘we’ company, it would be a shame to become ‘them’.
Peter
Mike–
Updated screenshots will likely be added soon.
Peter–
I’m a bit confused by your response - the e-mail explicitly explains why we will need to charge for certain features, offers two free months of service when we do start charging for these features, and states unequivocally that if you are not comfortable with this arrangement you should not apply for one of the alpha spots but instead wait for the beta.
I’m with you Mike! Looks like I didn’t send mine in until 9 minutes after I got it. I guess I shouldn’t have taken the time to fill out some comments in the requested info. Hopefully I snuck in the top 100 though. :-/
WOW! I just got the e-mail. It arrived here only an hour ago. Guess my submission will be a bit late
Congrats on the succes thus far!
ARGH, too late!
Oh well . . . countdown til the beta . . .
I replied within minutes, I believe - hopefully I got in
Darn timezones
I didnt get the email till I woke up this morning NZ time. Guess I missed out 
Hoping the beta isn’t far away
Good thing, it took me 3 minutes.
Alex: I would make sure you sent out emails to the responders. I would love to trust everyone on the internet but I would image a ton of people would respond with different emails and a change of usernames so they could give them out to friends or worse, sell it out. Something only to think about since you are giving out an extremely highly demanded service.
Reminds me of Gmail.
…blasted job, otherwise I would have been right on top of the email. I think I was an hour or 2 out. ugh!
strstr(’FeedLounge’) != true
Bummer…I was one of the people to receive the feedlounge alpha invite, but for some reason I didn’t get it until 5pm tonight…and it was sent out this morning. There were more than 175 replies in the first 10 minutes, so it’s p…
Arrgh ! Guess my reply went out in about 13 mins since that mail landed in my mailbox
Hope you folks realise that there are many like me who are rather patiently waiting for Feedlounge & would love to give it a whirl & help you improve it
Hope I (& the others who got back to your mail as soon as possible) do get an Alpha invite
Overwhelmed
Yesterday I sent out a FeedLounge newsletter to the people who had filled out the form for more information/beta test. I included a brief synopsis of what we’re doing and working on, and also offered alpha spots to the first 100 people to reply1.
I…
Alex,
I wasn’t meaning to beat you guys up about the decision and I certainly wasn’t trying to suggest that you’d tried to slip it in under the radar - you did make it very clear.
All I meant to say was that you might lose a valuable commodity (your testers) through charging them further down the line.
Doesn’t look like you’ve got any shortage of alphas though or that you’ll be down on customers. Good luck and I’ll look forward to an invite at some point.
100 Alpha Invites Sent
I’ve sent out the invites to the 100 new alpha users.
…
I just want to say thanks for the invite! Apparently 4 minutes was quick enough to get into the batch of 100.
To reply to Peter re: data loss, in addition to Feedlounge being labelled as an alpha, isn’t it a simple matter to export your OPML file from nearly any feedreader? This seems like a wise step for anyone vested in reading their news through RSS.
Time to import my OPML and see how it goes!
I figured that would happen, I just hope my quick response was quick enough. I’ve been excited about FeedLounge since I first heard about it a month ago.
Darn.. I knew it was too good to be true to get one of those email invite for the first 100 notification.. I was crossing my fingers hoping that I was at least the 100th. I guess not. I’ll have to sit diligently by my inbox waiting.
Mine seems to have gone astray somewhere on the internet, could you please resend?
Jokes aside, I think that you are totally doing the right thing to build up expecations with the invite only, and not to take on more than you can handle.
Good luck
Waiting patiently,
Tim
darnnit… here’s another timezone victim… -_-”
Damn. I sent a reply, but it was 6 hours after i recieved the email. I really think your disadvantaging those of us that are on the opposite side of the world and are sleeping while your giving out invites