Thursday, February 9th, 2006

Circumstances Surrounding “Beta”

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As Box.net approaches its relaunch point, we are faced with an interesting problem. How do we depict the V2 as a living-breathing-functioning site, while also conditioning users to the fact that there may be bugs? Well, the obvious answer, especially in ‘modern times,’ is to call it a beta. It should be as simple as that; we say it’s a beta, and users understand that we are still developing features, improving the interface, and fixing functionality. The difficulty with this, however, is that nearly every company in the past 18 months has been launched with a ‘beta’ tag stuck on it. While many of these outfits are legitimate, the overall sentiment (at least in the box HQ) is that the word’s true definition has now been tarnished by hip startups carelessly begging for attention. The point? Yes, our launch will definitely feel like a beta release – But we won’t rub it in. In fact, you may never even hear the word come out of our mouth (or keyboard). To make us feel better, I’ve compiled a very short list of sites that could have said they were beta, but didn’t:

http://www.goowy.com
http://www.edgeio.com/ (not launched)
http://www.writeboard.com/ (and 37′s older projects)
http://www.newsvine.com

Not a long list, but we’re in good company. If you know of others, shoot me an email: aaron@box.net

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