FoshizniK!

I responded to Dan’s post on the death of beta with a rather lengthy comment, that was more like “a whole new post”.

So why not reproduce it here… 

Beta doesn’t have so much meaning online as you say. Even when it comes to software, as someone who used the internet before it was fashionable I’m sure you remember spending hours online in the middle of the night downloading a beta-test version of some or other programme over your 56k modem (or your 36.6…).

But back then only beta software was released online to iron out all the bugs, before the x.0 version was released on optical, and people bought it in actual shops.

Then there was the “l337?ness of having a load of software with version numbers like 0.6.0.3 littering your immense two-gig hard drive.

But beta in this sense is surely destined to be one of those words the online community in general hangs on to and changes the meaning of ever so slightly. To me, I agree with your point that a website should never be taken out of beta in the sense that you should constantly be tweaking, changing and updating. But this is the Web 2.0+ way isn’t it.

Now, when I see beta, I relate it more to SaaS, but also to individual websites, in the sense of, “OK guys, we’ve started building this service or site and we want you to have a play around and iron out all the massive bugs and issues – but we’re not going to actively promote the site until it reaches a state we are happy with for the time being.” This, if you like, brings you to version 1.0.

From then on, you’re saying “here’s the full working version of the site” but you are not by any means resting on your laurels and leaving the site to wander out shaky-legged into the world. Of course you’ll keep on making updates and tweaking this and that function to make it user-friendly, but you are saying “it actually works”, whereas in beta the odd function may mess you around.

Does that make sense?

Incidentally, in the pre-software world a beta reader is: “a person who reads a written work, generally fiction, with the aim of improving grammar, spelling, characterization, and general style of a story prior to its release to the general public.”

Tags: Beta, Dan Leach, Linking Up Linking Out, Social Media, Software, Twitter, Web 2.0

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 9:19 am and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.