Anything new in ibmverse.com? Yes, the IBM Verse Beta Trial

I think most of you have done the same thing. We just abandoned ibmverse.com.
Once in a while, I have a look: Anything new? „First Steps“ is still entirely in English. Way better than the Polish, Swedish and I don’t know what mix at the beginning, but still not in German. Help is, but that isn’t the point for showing of to prospective customers, or is it?

New features? Not that I have seen anything. Still as crippled as in the beginning. After my first review – which I did not publish for several reasons – I thought, things would change with time. Nope.

No new mails. Not even news about Verse or IBM in general. That I find rather strange. Wouldn’t that be the channel of choice of the Verse-Team to provide us with news fresh from the press or even some insider things?

I wondered how many users are in the ibmverse.com directory. A search through the alphabet revealed 26’849. Everybody shows up twice and tags are found, too. Let’s say there are about 12’000 individuals. Wouldn’t that make up quite a big fraction of IBM partners and customers that still have IBM Notes in the portfolio? Alright, a lot of IBMers are probably in there, too. Still, could be worse.

So, what’s the purpose of ibmverse.com?
It is too limited to be a sensible marketing tool for prospective customers.
It is too limited to be an alternative for any free mail tool.
It isn’t used as a marketing tool for IBM Partners.
It does not look like the latest screen shots anymore.
The term „preview“ had been dropped, just because an outcry of all those waiting for a real free version, made IBM a bit nervous. But that was just a coat of paint. Most limitations remained. For any practical purposes it is still a preview but serves the only to of showing of the fancy web design.
No „taking on Google“.
Not even close to half a million users.
I tried the „Sign up now“ link on the IBM Verse page: TIMEOUT!
I tried a „Try and buy“ from twitter: TIMEOUT!
I scrolled through #NewWayToWork for a while. It is just me or is it the same stuff retweeted over and over again? I tried several links for a white paper. It was always the same. By far most of the tweeters are IBMers anyway. It almost looks like an IBM internal twitter feed. Talk about inbreeding.
Then I found this link, where you can sign up for the Verse Beta Trial. Err, what? Beta Trial?
Dutifully I tried it immediately. I want to see where this leads. Let’s see how long it will take to either get a message, that I am already a user, get a new shiny Verse account with hopefully all the bells and whistles or a beta account with questionable usefullness. Or nothing at all.
IBM either thinks that ibmverse.com is a bad thing and should be left rotting in an abandoned server rack or it was renamed to Beta Trial. We will see.