Beta testing….who’s doing it?

Surprisingly or not, we are all pretty much beta testing these days. As a generation of “early adopters” who love trying new technologies and concepts many of us have willing beta tested products…. Google Glass anyone?

This is especially true in the world of applications, we all download apps and use them on a regular basis. The thing is we also pretty much expect that some apps might not be 100% bug free in the beginning and often have no big problems when issues arise because we know an “update” will soon fix the issue. Now think about how we would react if our laptops, phones or even cars had a bug; I’m pretty sure that we would not be as nonchalant or understanding. The thing is many companies, developers etc are aware of this “willingness” to use a product not fully ready for production. They are aware that as as early adopters we love trying the new and little known so we can be the first or among the first to try something new.

According to the attached article companies are making use of this trend and some do not even inform consumers that they are beta testing. Nope they give us tech and we find any problems or issues for them; I guess it can be viewed as a win-win situation as new tech and software get tested and early adopters get to fulfill their need for newer and better.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/13/technology/innovation/beta-testing/index.html

2 thoughts on “Beta testing….who’s doing it?”

  1. William

    In software development, the word beta has been used more and more loosely over the past decade. Software in beta used to mean a product far from its final release form filled with bugs. Nowadays, we have come to expect software in beta to be much more refined, polished and very close to its actual release form.

  2. james.johnson

    This is pretty much how the process of making new tech usually goes. Instead of just looking at the product from their own point of view, they would rather let the consumer test it and give feedback on how they’ve seen the product operate and fix the bug according to their general opinion (similar to the “publish then filter” idea Clay Shirkey stated)

Comments are closed.