To Beta or Not To Beta

All of sudden there seems to be a backlash against labeling a product as "beta". Generally speaking this is used to communicate to the user that it is in a stage of continual evolution and that there may be bugs with it.

One of the most influential opponents is Jason Fried of 37Signals. The arguments that he stated in a recent presentation he gave for the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conferenct were:

1) Products should always be evolving
2) Bugs should always be fixed
3) You shouldn't go to market with half-assed product, but rather half a product.

So once you go live you should be in version 1.0, not "beta".

He has some strong points, but I just think that any thing you can use to properly communicate to your customers and adjust the expectations to be more in line with the reality of the situation is good. Calling something "beta" does this.

Of course if something stays in "beta" forever then this becomes a miscommunication. The word loses its meaning and therefore loses it potential to communicate anything. Google is terrible about this. They leave things in "beta" long after there seems to be anything significant happening with the product.

For the time being CommunityWalk will remain in "beta". I use it to let people know that the fact that it is so rough around the edges was a matter of necessity and that I am working to improve the situation continually (literally every night). I think as soon as I have some basic functionality for finding a community based on location, popularity, keywords, etc. then I will bring CommunityWalk out of "beta", though. Basically once it is half a product rather than one quarter of a product I will feel more comfortable with a 1.0 designation.