Posted on Tuesday 29 November 2005 - Popularity: unranked
Technology companies have turned “beta” into a long-term label, with some products and Web services remaining in test mode for months, or even years. A marketing professor says, “I can’t come up with anything else in the entire marketing world where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed or inadequate product and it helps grow your user base.”
I don’t completely agree with that professors comment as many popular beta releases the last year were definitely better than many so called “final” products out there, so I wouldn’t call those betas “flawed”, but of course the meaning of the label has unquestionably changed this past year. The one company that made beta releases popular is of course Google, but many other companies jumped on the new trend as well. The following article takes a closer look at the marketing side of “beta” releases.
