I’ve been looking at a fair few alpha and beta products this week, which normally fills me a huge amount of inspiration. But this week has been a mixed bag of good, bad and seriously ugly.
Just before walking in a lunch on Wednesday, I voiced my frustration with one the features on Dabr (a mobile Twitter app still being developed). Namely, the fact that it was taking example from Twitter and limiting the replies tab to tweets starting with @<username> only. So, if someone had mentioned you mid-sentence, it wouldn’t show up. A few hours later, and it had been integrated into Dabr as an experimental feature. Fantastic, responsive and although I know that not everything is as simple as this – it really should try to be.
Some of the beta sites I’ve looked at, I’ve understood what they’re trying to do, but don’t think the delivery is quite right - i.e. the product is all wrong. And in contrast – really good ideas that just aren’t quite there yet.
Spotify is a perfect example of the later. Now this isn’t to say I’m not using it – because I am daily. But it’s still very limited. Spotify (I can only assume) is meant to be a downloadable homage to Lastfm. It’s still in its infancy, but everything I love about Last just isn’t there. There’s no intelligent recommendation feature – which is one of the main reasons I also love iTunes so much. Sometimes I just don’t know what I want to listen to, and even Amazon provides the right kind of suggestive functionality.
It only takes a few minutes to set Spotify up, which is great – and it does have a fairly decent catalog (although, no Vampire Weekend?!) But, I’m sure that they would have heard all of this feedback from focus groups following an alpha launch. Whereas the drag and drop play lists are nice, a homepage to list the catalogue by genre would make listening a far better experience. There does appear to be a ‘radio station’ feature, taken directly from Lastfm – but I couldn’t get it work properly.
My point really, is that it’s all about timing. It seems that the ‘beta’ tag is no longer there to signify the second stage of release, but simply acts as a caveat to say ‘yes, it’s still being developed - but we’ve got to get it out there quickly’. It’s a safe way to push a product out, while creating the opportunity to blame everything on the fact that it’s still ‘in beta’.
This isn’t a new way to save face, we all know that there are what, several thousand Google products consistently in beta? Yes, that’s 45% of ALL of its products folks, including the four-year-old Gmail. But it’s frustrating when I’ve seen other apps and tools well beyond the beta stage, with fantastic UI, that just work – but can’t be launched due to legislation-based or ‘big brother’ brand limitations.
Similarly, there’s nothing wrong with releasing a product that’s complete at the stage of launch, which will be developed and made richer through time. That’s just releasing a newer version - you’re improving the product – not changing its very core.