On May 19th I wrote about how a bunch of sites were running in perpetual beta. Wired even picked up on it. Let’s revisit those to see if they’ve moved on…
Friendster: Out of beta!
Kinja: Still beta.
Orkut: Still beta.
Chicagoist: Out of beta!
Flickr is beta
Feedburner is beta
Dropcash is beta
MSN Search is beta (but their logo doesn’t show it — it’s in text)
Froogle is beta
Jotspot is beta
Rojo is beta
Snap is beta
Gmail is in beta
What about Google News? That's been out longer than most of the stuff you talked about! And honestly, there's really nothing wrong with it (except some really screwed up HTML, but that's never stopped other portal sites)
Google Suggest is also in beta.
Jacob, how long has Google Suggest been out? It's very cool, I'm really suprised I haven't heard about it before.
Google Everything is still in beta.
Alex: I'm pretty sure that Google Suggest was only released this last week.
What about google's GMail?
Wired ran a good story on why google news has been in beta for over three years.
Call me crazy, but if it's on a public URL, it's not "beta," it's a "release."
beta is just a way to not be responsible for the shit you put on the web
That crap known as Orkut should go back to the drawing board, not be in Beta. I'm surprise the 37Sig boys haven't written anything yet about their lousy usability.
What I find amazing is the take up on a lot of these sites. I wonder how adaptable this kind of model would be for a software program. When something like Flickr hits 1.0 I don't expect to notice a huge difference, some new features, bug fixes and the like but nothing major.
Unlike, say, Firefox which was fairly painful as you followed it's releases, updating extensions all along.
Not sure I agree with jason though, most of the better sites are using it as a way to generate initial interest whilst not limiting the functionality that can be available.
Maybe there should be a new term? After all, most of these sites are fairly reactive in introducing new features based on the most popular ones already in use... instead of releases maybe they should be "evolutions"?
Beta: A euphemism for "Got a bug? Deal with it and shut the f*&% up" ;-)
Both Gmail and Flickr seem pretty great and stable enough for me to consider switching to alpha phase. Or has the word "beta" become a fashionable logo thingy and I haven't realized it?
Whatever.
Has anyone ever refused to use a service because it was "in beta"? I'm not sure what all the fuss is. Just pretend it's not "in beta".
MyJeeves is in beta and so is LinkedIN although they do not advertise with it in their logo :)
http://www.atomenabled.org/
- Still beta...
beto,
as i recall, alpha is before beta... or did you mean you think flickr and gmail are buggy?
To be honest I currently don't see what Kinja adds to the world of RSS aggregators appart from that "easy adding sites without knowing their RSS url" thing. IMO the whole site is from the concept more alpha or pre-alpha than beta :-(
anon, I think what beto means is that he/she will consider using alpha, rather than beta, in their own developments.
Indeed.com and Blingo is in beta too..