Lately, I’ve been reflecting about the meaning of being in “beta”. Web startups are interesting because they can always be in motion, adding new features and functions on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis (though that’s a little overboard).
The iPhone is kind of like being in beta. You can add bells and whistles to it since it’s just a piece of glass and metal with some circuits behind it. (more importantly is the fact that others can add their own apps and make money off it).
As a user, it can be exciting, or it can be frustrating. It’s a state of mind sort of thing among your users, I think. If you engender trust and support among your fan base, a new feature that comes out is a visual display of your hard work and effort to make people happy.
As a slight aside, I was listening an STVP panel with quincy jones III, MC Hammer, Chamillionaire, and mistah fab and thinking just how close the music industry and being an artist is to being an entrepreneur in the internet space. Both artists and startups are trying to get massive user adoption and page views. Artists are trying to convert through record sales and startups through content/product sales, ad click throughs, or some flavor of the two.
Back to the beta thought. What if you could take the beta idea to the tried and true business models? What if traditional brick and mortar businesses could be in “beta”? What if you walked into an ice cream store, and they said — Ok so today, we’re trying something a little different. We’re going to be serving ice cream in these new “upside down” containers that we did a short run order of (let’s assume they changed the formula for the flavor so it doesn’t drip). How neat. If you were a rabid fan of the ice cream store, wouldn’t you want to go try it out? After all, it’s in beta, and showing your support for the new feature is tantamount to it becoming a reality. And there’s virality built into it. “Hey, did you see those new Dairy King upside down sundaes? You gotta try it out”.
I understand that companies launch new stuff all the time in limited quantities to test the waters and that’s not what I’m talking about here. It’s about the message you send to customers by saying “Hey, we’re just trying this out, whaddya think?”
This may actually happen a lot more, but I feel it’s pretty rare for established businesses to do. Maybe this really only can happen on the web?
