There are two opposite approaches in the world that most software companies take when talking about future products. 1. Say nothing until the day of the release and 2. Talk regularly about your roadmap. There used to be a third – “announcing a product but then not shipping it for a while” (anyone remember vaporware?) – but that’s faded into the background for the most part at this point (and is distinctly different than #2.)
Alex Iskold of AdaptiveBlue has a great example of talking regularly about your roadmap up on his post Work In Progress: SmartLinks WebService and Automatic SmartLinks. I’m very intrigued with AdaptiveBlue and very impressed with the way Alex thinks. I also love that he’s talking about what he’s working on and asking for thoughts and comments.
Greg Reinacker has done this regularly over the years on his blog, dating back to a post on January 4, 2003 titled News Aggregator. If you want to see some fun old posts on “thinking out loud and rapidly interating your product”, look at Greg’s archive posts from January to March 2003.
Guys – keep it up!