I have a proposal for a way for the web 2.0 bubble to burst without causing any pain. How about everyone collectively drops the “beta” label? I’m only half kidding. We could pick a day for everyone to coordinate swapping the little disclaimer out so nobody gets left behind — call it Beta-Be-Gone Day.
Trulia dropped its beta designation last week, and Farecast does the same today. It’s refreshing to see companies accept their product as it is, allowing themselves to be semantically accountable for its flaws. You might be churning out a flavor-of-the-week website, but at least it’s a mature and well-aged flavor of the week.
Here’s a good post from SaaSBlogs about the whole “Beta” tag that companies are using:
http://www.saasblogs.com/2007/05/09/will-beta-fly-in-b2b-saas/
Linked
Nice only took FareCast 20$ million and 2-3 years to get out of beta then… good to know for the future startups ;)
Hehe that’s a neat idea — make one day in the year when any startup that is looking to drop its “beta” label can drop it.
Think about it — the startups are much more likely to get a lot more press attention on that day, rather than aiming to drop the beta in isolation.
Hey it could become the CES of Web20 – neat.
I already had an acronym for this: PIB (Permanently In Beta). We will be dropping ours pretty soon.
I’d never put beta on my site. You can’t sell beta software
I like the idea for most sites but I think in eBay’s case they need to add the Beta designation. They are doing so much testing on the site right now its like they reverted to Beta. Not bad getting paid full price for less than stellar service.
Farecast also updated with some more features at the same time as they dropped the “Beta” tag. So it’s not as entirely arbitrary in their case as it might seem.