Dec 3, 2008
The death of BETA!
My morning kicked off with a conversation about Twilert and in particular why the site was launched in BETA and what BETA actually means. It got me thinking about my reasoning behind it and I ended at the question of “Why would I ever take the site out of BETA?”
For me, BETA means the final version of a service or site before small tweaks are made and a final, clean version is rolled out to the masses. However, that implies that the service is perfect as doesn’t require constant TLC, tweaks and improvements and I’m yet to find a single online service that fits in the “perfect” bracket.
The point is that, as I am finding with Twilert, user interaction online now means that feedback and advice for online tools and services comes thick and fast and webmasters (for want of a better word) need to react to this feedback by incorporating it into their sites. The feedback will never stop and therefore neither should the tweaking.
BETA works for real-world things, things that can’t be upgraded or changed en-mass easily. But online, there is no such thing as BETA. Every CEO, CFO and webmaster should treat their site like it is constantly in BETA and mould their service to meet the demands of those using it. If you don’t then a competitor that does, will, and you’ll lose users overnight.
I pretty much consider myself in permanent Beta, let alone the projects I work on. Particularly with user interaction and engagement, everything should always be done with the long term in mind, otherwise you’ll always set yourself up for a disaster at some point.
I’m an actual beta version of a person…
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?
That’s not so much a comment as a new post Tim. Agree with you – I think in a nutshell BETA doesn’t mean what it used to
Sorry, I do have a tendency to ramble on and on…
[...] responded to Dan’s post on the death of beta with a rather lengthy comment, that was more like “a whole new [...]