Recently I came across a new ‘opportunity’ that advertised they were looking for testers to provide feedback on a new sports trading system.

I’m always keen to see what else is out there so clicked on the link and was taken to the information page. Now, to me asking someone to be a tester suggests that the programme author wants some help. They’re looking for people from different backgrounds and experience to see whether what they’ve developed would work when scaled up.

Apparently I may be wrong. It now seems that to become a tester you now have to purchase the system and be expected to provide testimonials for the author to use on the main sales page.

Now to some extent I can see that this may be an ethical way to market but I do feel that the definition of a ‘tester’ is being abused in this particular case.

You see they are asking for 100 testers and guess what it’s likely they’ll restrict the number of purchases to 100 anyway so the whole concept of a being a tester doesn’t really ring true in this instance.

By all means call people who buy something like ‘early adopters’ but not ‘testers’. To me it’s just playing with words to try and convince people they are being put into a privileged position when in fact it’s nothing of the sort.

Do you have examples of other instances where people are possibly being misled into taking part in something…if so leave a comment.