This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Web Buzz by Douglas Clifton. Original Post: Better Early Than not at All Feed Title: blogZero Feed URL: http://loadaveragezero.com/app/s9y/index.php?/feeds/index.rss1 Feed Description: Web Development News, Culture and Opinion Latest Web Buzz Posts Latest Web Buzz Posts by Douglas Clifton Latest Posts From blogZero

The Wall Street Journal Online has an interesting article For Some Technology Companies, 'Beta' Becomes a Long-Term Label, which covers the new proliferation of "beta" software releases — and in particular those falling under the umbrella of Web-based applications. Of course Google has been doing this for years. In fact, it's probably quicker to list their properties that aren't in beta status than those that are.

Now a large scale public beta of a complex application like Google Mail is a good thing, in my opinion. But now days the term beta has fallen out of the software developer's lexicon and landed squarely into the marketing department bag of tricks. Many so-called "stealth" start-ups are using this tactic to veil their products in mysterious "private" beta tests (send us your email address and if you're lucky you'll get to test our product, otherwise you'll be the first to know when we release it to the public!).

Okay, Coke and many other non-tech companies have been doing this sort of thing for years, but if you ask me using a software testing methodology as marketing hype is a bit too much to take.

Via O'Reilly Radar.