Mo' Beta Testing Blues

theodp writes "Wired picks up on the observation made by Jason Fried that more and more sites and tools are launching and remaining in 'beta' mode. Prominent sites like Google News, A9, Froogle, Friendster, Tribe, and Orkut all sport 'Beta' disclaimers. Is this to get users to do the testing, a subtle way of saying 'don't expect support', or simply a marketing ploy to generate buzz by making users feel 'exclusive'?"

Comments

Re:Beta Stuff

[SamBeckett]

As for my site, as long as there's no true commercial interest within my work, it will most likely stay as "alpha." Not to say that people shouldn't expect support, but rather that they shouldn't expect things to necessarily work either ;)

Maybe not "commerical interest", but nonetheless you are trying to get some. I haxxored your site and found the following psuedo-SQL code:

SELECT phone_number FROM users WHERE sex='F';

FOR EACH phone_number DIAL phone_number AND BREATHE HEAVILY;

I miss

[Phosphor3k]

The test server that was up before slashdot switched.

Brak was his name, wasn't it? Oh, we had some good times together. Crazy stories, everyone had mod points. Ah yes, that was the day.

/me sniffs

Beta = Better

[DJ Rubbie]

Well, duh, beta is another way to spell 'better', so the 'beta edition' must mean the 'better edition'. Unlike final versions, like how they say it's final, but they didn't say 'better' or 'beta'! =P

Hmm, wait a minute, this piece of beta software I have running seems to be misbehaving...

Re:Beta Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah and we all know those cross dressers are messing with our database memory needs!
because of them we can't store the gender as bool