There has been a proliferation of web apps released in beta form in the past few years. For those who aren't exactly sure what beta means, basically beta is a term used for software that is not quite ready for release. It means that there are still some known bugs, and most likely some unknown bugs in the software. The software is in the need of some bug fixing and tweaking before it can go prime time.
Back in my early days of system administration, many of the GPL/open source software tools we used were quite usable in their beta stage, and it was very common for us to run beta software on our production servers. Most software projects had an alpha release that was, oddly enough, pre beta, and most alpha releases were quite buggy and unstable. Eventually these alpha products would become beta, and these beta products would become release versions. Alpha and beta versions were and are a way to release software to the masses for feedback and testing with the aim to produce a release quality version.
It seems many modern web based software products are using the beta label a little too freely and for other purposes. We labeled kinja.com a beta product when it was initially released, and rightly so as it was a new product just out of the gate. I left kinja well over a year ago, and yet kinja is still in beta. Google News, gmail and flickr are all still labeled beta well over a year from their initial releases. Its hard to believe that these companies have not been actively developing these products, and are unable to hammer out any of the bugs and features in the software at this point.
It is invaluable to release software early to your users so they can use it, touch it, and give you feedback on a work in progress. I think the idea of releasing alpha/beta software to users for feedback is an excellent tool that will help produce quality, bug free software. However, companies are using the beta label to excuse flaws in their web based software beyond just getting initial development feedback. What else can explain beta versions of web applications that have been in production use for over a year.
It seems that software companies think that adding a beta graphic to their webapp's logo gives them a bit of leeway in the quality of their wares. Maybe this is true, but how long can you label your live webapp as beta when people are using it as production software. Usually a beta release is followed by more advanced pre-release products, and maybe even release candidates, which eventually evolve into an actual released product, a 1.0 version of your software if you will. In the old days, if a product remained in a beta stage for overly long periods it meant that the software was most likely no longer being actively developed. I find it hard to believe that gmail has gone idle.
The beta label is being used to excuse flaws in software as opposed to being used as a tool to help expose flaws in software before final release. In the end it dilutes the value of releasing beta software if software is labeled beta without the intention of using feedback to produce release quality software. I imagine there is overlap in most cases, and most companies do wish to expose and fix flaws, but non the less, it still seems disingenuous when obviously production ready webapps remain beta for overly extended periods.
