Here are a couple of things we hear frequently from our customers:
- I let someone in to my account, why can't they see everything?
- I want to share with 50 people, but I can only have 5 users on my account.
It makes sense that you'd want to do this. Sharing online is so easy, it seems natural to just open it up to everybody. That might work for a blog or a forum but an active project needs directed feedback in order to move forward.
Think about it this way: In a real office environment, would you do either of these two things?
- Drop an entire folder with 50 different items on someone's desk and say "Here, do something with this."
- Make 50 copies of the folder, distribute it to 50 people and say "Okay, I want everyone's comments and feedback now."
In the first case, your poor co-worker is likely to be baffled, overwhelmed, and frustrated. In the second case you'll either have to wade through hundreds of comments that may or may not be relevant, or hound the 48 people who didn't even bother to respond to you.
Providing or soliciting directed feedback moves a project forward while tossing something out to everybody leaves a project floundering.