ericellenberg

There’s a good chance you’re familiar with the term “beta” by now. Most (in)famous of all betas is Gmail, Google’s email service that has been in beta since its launch in April 2004. Five years later, millions upon millions use Gmail, but “beta” is still right there in the logo.

If Gmail is beta software, which is to say “unfinished,” what then constitutes a finished product?

Before, there wasn’t an Internet around to let people kick the tires. But now, when even a digital camera can get on the web, “beta” is just another way of saying, “we’re working on it; what do you think?” Many software developers have willfully contracted this beta epidemic for the sake of opening the development process to incorporate user feedback into the “final” product. Apple, Apple has even gotten in on it with iWork.com.

And you know, why not? Instead of working on a product as if you lived in a vacuum, why not push out a beta when it’s in working condition to get users’ input on how it could be improved? The users tell you what they want from it to use or buy it, and you use that feedback to steer the remainder of the development cycle. It’s a solid idea.

But there’s a catch: in a beta culture, the first impression is the most important.

Imagine the scenario. You hear about a new product (in beta) that attempts to solve a problem affecting you, or that’s just plain cool. You sign up, fiddle with it, find something you don’t like about it, and move on.

If you’re the developer, unless you captured an audience during that time, you’re screwed. Competitors will learn from your mistake, avoid them in their products, and if you don’t act fast, you will be forgotten. At the very least, your reputation takes a hard hit. For the rest of your product’s life, you’ll be trying to convince people how everything’s better now, all the glitches were sorted out, and now it’s awesome. But you’ve lost that initial momentum. It makes no difference how many places and how many ways you described everything as “beta.” If Gmail had not rethought the email experience, and had they not introduced it with an astronomical 2GB of free storage (thought to be a joke at the time), people would have stayed with Yahoo and Hotmail.

Look where they are now.

The point is this: a beta release is just as important as the “final” release. If it is facing the public, it is not really a beta. You’ll get the urge to do it because everybody else is, but carefully consider what you put out there before slapping a beta sticker on it and waiting for the feedback. You may have just tripped over your laces at the starting line.