Many companies are using their blogs, campaigns, videos and general outreach to engage with their community in various ways. When companies do think of community contribution in one form or another, it usually takes the form of comments or a like. uTest, the world’s largest marketplace for crowdsourced software testing, is flipping this notion on its head. Believing that an open and global community can offer a knowledge based resource which no closed off company can match, uTest’s community has become one of its most prized assets. To nurture this “asset”, uTest has demonstrated a keen understanding that if you want to have an active community base, you need to engage your community and get them excited about engaging you back. In this post we’re going to focus on three uTest programs structured with just this sort of sensitivity in mind, i.e. that community communication and utilization is a two-way street.

1. The Bug Battle- Bug Battle is a brilliant campaign which actually makes testing interesting for even the non-hardcore, techy individual. Bug Battles pit uTesters against each other in a contest to diagnose a select number of popular web, mobile, desktop and gaming applications in search for the one most in need of a good bug exterminator. Competitions take place quarterly and the latest one sought to uncover the buggiest geo location software from amongst three choice contestants; Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite (results due out in mid-June…stay tuned). uTest community members really get into this one. They relish the competition alone, but if that were not enough, there’s always the not-too-shabby prize money of $4,000 to keep them annoyingly giddy for the few short weeks that the competition is under way.  For participating companies, battles usually generate a healthy amount of press, a scrubbed list of prioritized bugs (given free of charge, upon request) and many are pleased enough with the results to become regular uTest clients.
2. Crash Courses- Another relatively new and cool initiative is uTest’s “Crash Courses” for testers. Instead of going through an official certifying body or training company to create their training material and content, uTest turned to select members of their community to seek out top testers with serious bona fides in both experience and the best testers ratings.                                                                    Using the community itself to source their wisdom and talent, uTest was able to ascribe instant credibility to their courses while giving their community exactly the kind of courses they wanted.
3. uTest Blog- uTest makes heavy use of its community with its “guest blogger“ program. Members not only contribute to the blog itself but also play a hand in its direction. Votes are taken on key content issues such as who should be interviewed, and what questions should be asked for the uTest monthly Testing The Limits column featuring outside experts, execs and authors. uTest’s openness in allowing uTesters to continuously contribute to their posts has contributed to their blog becoming a must read in the app-testing world, and has led to the landing of a “Top 5” finalist spot in the “Best Corporate Blog” category of the 2009 Open Web Awards as well as winning the Hive Award for the best blog of 2010 in the “Business Software” category.

What’s most interesting about these programs is their broad demographics appeal across the global testing community. Advanced testers, who have already done their time in the testing trenches, are not necessarily looking for the same community experience as your bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new recruit. By affording veteran testers the opportunity to become Bug Battle judges, course designers and guest bloggers, uTest has created the equivalent of a corporate advancement track for their community, significantly increasing the uTest community’s time frame of relevance for active community members. Creating a community with a mass appeal for its market and which allows its members to actively influence the community itself, uTest has earned a die-hard following of some of the best software testers in the world. Consequently, uTest is now the benefactor of a top tier pool of talent with which they can offer superior testing services to any prospective client. Grant your community a voice to speak and a hand to act, and they will grant you their talent. A solid winning strategy for any company wishing to optimize community utilization – tested and certified by the experts themselves.

Tags: Brightkite, Bug Battle, crowdsourced software testing, foursquare, Gowalla, tester, testing, uTest

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 11:30 am and is filed under Startups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.