In the past few months, especially with AI, there have been a lot of posts "[company] releases [product]", where a company has not in fact released a product—they're just testing it with their friends in closed alpha/beta; you click through and it's just an email signup waitlist to be notified when the product is ready.<p>Is there some kind of flag or tag for these? How can I distinguish real releases from "we're in testing"/"we will release soon" announcements?<p>Can we start tagging these?
> They're just testing it with their friends in closed alpha/beta;<p>That's being generous. I know I've read "startup advice" to make a landing page with your idea and get signups, and then build it only if it gets some interest. I don't think that's good advice for fields that evolve daily anyway, by the time you gauge interest, the world will have moved on or someone else will have built the product.
They're not allowed as Show HN (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html</a>) but it's not always clear-cut. If the product has a video walk-through for example it's more real than just a page full of text (promises).
Is it Vaporware[0] stuff?<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware</a>