When are we going to see the BETA tag off the Web 2.0 services?This post by Mayank Gupta got me to write something about something that had been in my thoughts for quite sometime now and this ‘quite sometime’ is more than 6-7 months. I am sure this hasn’t escaped your notice as well. Whenever you see a Web 2.0 service, you find the word ‘BETA’ tagged with it. No matter how many times the service has been upgraded, it doesn’t count. You still find the same ‘beta’ tag.



In his post Mayank cites the example of Zoho referring to a post by mani. Even after being upgraded for the umpteenth time Zoho services - Zoho Writer, Zoho Creator, Zoho Sheet and Zoho Show are all in beta versions still.



Now it seems that everything releases in beta version, and for reasons not known to me, tend to stay that way no matter how much work has been made towards the existing service/software, no matter how many upgrades followed.



Now, we have a few more conspicuous ‘betas’. Windows Live where all services like Windows Live Mail is in beta, the IM client is beta as everything else is. The new Yahoo! Mail is beta, as has been GMail for the last 2 years or so!



Mayank concludes by saying;

Now, it is bad or good, I am not sure about it but it seems to me that it is good for the companies because they are getting what they want and that is customer and the information.


Hang on; he can very well be right! In fact keeping the releases in beta version state, the company can get constant feedback, reviews and other ideas from the customers/users. So it serves them all right.



Then the upgraded version would be released, and of course it would be the beta version of the upgrade!