December 5, 2005 | Filed under:

.Net magazine asked me:

A recent article on the Wall Street Journal's site questions why software stays in beta for so long these days (http://tinyurl.com/aueuh). The article quotes Peter Sealey, a marketing professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola Co., who says he knows of no other industry "where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed or inadequate product [and] it helps grow your user base." Why are web applications being released to the public in beta stage and who's really benefiting from this - the web service provider or the user?

My reply:

Products should never leave beta. Out-of-Beta means ‘finished’.  Users are repelled by this idea because it means that there is no room for them in the experience. Out-of-beta is so ‘Web 1.0’, ‘one-way web’, ‘consumption of other people’s crap’ instead of a participatory, living web of interestingness.

I don’t think anyone uses beta as an excuse for bad code, or crashing software. Beta just means that the product is alive. It is the experience that is in beta, not the quality.

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