Personal Settings (not yet implemented)

Playing with a new supposed IRC-killer, Convore.com, I noticed a product choice they made in the settings that I think has some real value as a choice.
They are showing settings for functionality not yet supported, but allowing you to opt out of them already.
It appears under the "Notification Settings," and are for being emailed if someone mentions your name, or being emailed if you've missed a week of messages (you wouldn't want them to stack up to an unmanageable quantity like, say, your email inbox).
You can see there are two benefits to exposing road-mapped functionality like this ahead of time, such as at big launch.

• For new users who assess the options in settings, you let them make their choices once and avoid needing to communicate to them when you add functionality later (and new opt-in features have been added in their settings).


• As a website trying to decide what to build next, you have an opportunity to quantify how many users view their settings and OPT OUT of something you haven't even built yet. If it appears to be unpopular, you can put it off indefinitely. You could even just remove it from the page & product backlog entirely.


• As a website trying to communicating to the world what you are about and where you are headed, this gives visible commitment to concrete features, even showing you've solved some of the tasks of information architecture and usability.


• Finally, for anyone who has designed for a full feature set, then had to trim back to a "V1 release," leaving the full page design intact has many advantages. The overall balance of the page is not disrupted by tearing out things that belong there and ideally will eventually be there.